Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

In my day, never was longer.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

How stupid are these people?

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

This fight is for everything.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

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Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    The New York Times is probably the best newspaper in America, which tells you all you need to know about the worth of American journalism.

  3. 3.

    Bobby B.

    NYT is trying to compete with Yahoo’s news page, which shows stories by both The Daily Caller and Huffpo. Why call them on ethics unless you’rel an advertiser or clickbait maestro?

  4. 4.

    schrodinger's cat

    The Democrats had to fight both the media narrative and the GOP. There are far too many people (especially among those who vote regularly) who pay a lot of attention to the news from the MSM.

  5. 5.

    Tree With Water

    I’m taking yesterday’s results with a remarkable calm because I recognize them as a matter of chickens coming home to roost. The very same forces that yesterday prevailed unleashed war upon a people half a world away in 2003. In comparative terms, our catastrophe is both meaningless and poetic.

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: Exactly.

    Thanks also go to the Denver Post for endorsing a candidate they admitted sucked (Gardner). Were they afraid he was going to shoot them all if they endorsed Udall?

    Now watch them editorialize against him for doing what they already didn’t like.

    Idiots.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve grown to utterly loathe the sentence, “Washington is broken.” No, it’s not. Washington is VANDALIZED.

  8. 8.

    kindness

    @schrodinger’s cat: Seriously. Folks seem to forget that Fox’s framing accompanies every other media article no matter how stupid, contrived or crazy it is. Until liberals figure out how to counter act that premise with every interview given we are fighting with both arms tied behind our back.

    @Betty Cracker: Charles Pierce libelz!

  9. 9.

    Lady Bug

    Haven’t read it, but doubt it could be any worst than the Nick Kristoff article which claimed that Democrats lost so badly in part because they’re “too liberal” and have moved too far to the left in recent years.

    There was even the obligatory Obama needs to schmooze/compromise more with Republicans for good measure!

  11. 11.

    Trollhattan

    Local dead-tree (McClatchy) paper endorsed the Republican candidate for California State Controller for no reason I could discern beyond it somehow being bad to just have Democrats in state office.

    To hell with that noise.

  12. 12.

    GregB

    You Democrats are just upset that in the post Obama America the media is reporting that ISIS is on the run, the Ebola crisis is over and the McConnell recovery is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs a month.

  14. 14.

    BGinCHI

    @schrodinger’s cat: That’s the thing: he’s obviously not an idiot, in the real sense of the word. He might be forgiven his stupid behavior if he was.

    Instead he’s saying shit he knows is ridiculous because it keeps him in the middle of the conversation among Serious People. It’s a defense of the Status Quo, because mortgages and car service and dinners out and Barolo.

    All of these people will fuck whatever chickens they have to not to get real jobs.

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:
    I’ll grant that The New York Times is the poshest paper in America. I wouldn’t be so sure about it being the best. There may be better local newspapers.

  24. 24.

    KG

    @Cervantes: in fairness, a lot of local papers use the Times’ New Service regardless of the bent on the editorial page. The OC Register spouts all sorts of glibertarian bullshit on it’s editorial page, but if you flip through the news section, you find that a lot of the bylines include “NYT News Service”. The editorial pages most everywhere are crap.

  25. 25.

    Judge Crater

    Remember the rant by the late George Carlin, about how “they got us by the balls.”

    It’s true, as the double-speak of Luntz’s column makes clear. Corporate profits as a percent of GDP are at record highs. Wages, by the same measure, are at 50 or 60 year lows. Yet Obama is portrayed as anti-free enterprise and a socialist tool.

    The red state proles know something is amiss, but thanks to guys like Luntz and the right-wing noise machine they can’t put the pieces together. The whole meme that “government doesn’t work” is a self-fulfilling prophecy of monkey wrenchers like Luntz and Grover Norquist who want to abolish the New Deal and every subsequent piece of progressive legislation that has come out of Washington.

    They don’t want “Washington” to work – they want a brain dead government that serves the interests of corporations and the “wealth creators” who keep wages low and the stock market high.

  26. 26.

    Stella B.

    Not only did they give him column space, but they also disabled comments on the piece. At least people get to comment on Doubt-that’s columns (I always skip the column and go straight to the insults.)

  30. 30.

    kindness

    @Betty Cracker: Charles Pierce always says that one party in American politics is vandalizing the government. I was aping a common Wonkette reply.

    Wrong blog. Sorry.

  31. 31.

    Violet

    @KG:

    The editorial pages most everywhere are crap.

    Editorial pages are stupid. Who the hell cares what some person thinks about something. Give us the news. They can keep their opinions to themselves or pay for their own blog.

  32. 32.

    Cervantes

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    My personal opinion after comparing it to WSJ, Washpost, USAToday and such. YMMV.

    Sure, but what you said — and what I asked about — was this:

    Most local newspapers are far worse than NYT.

    The papers you list above aren’t “local.”

  33. 33.

    japa21

    @GregB: I just about threw up several times last night listening to the news and how practically every network talked about how Wall Street celebrated the GOP victories by jumping 100 points and setting new records and calling it the “GOP Bounce”. I was trying to figure out what they were calling it for the past 6 years, and even last Thursday and Friday when the DOW jumped 400 points and set new records.

    The media, all of it, it going to make any decent economic news look like it was all due to the GOP and how any negatives will be due to the fact that they still have work to do to get the country out of the Obama Recession.

  36. 36.

    Eric U.

    pretty sure there are some local advertising rags that are better than the NYT. Decades ago, I used to like the WAPO, but that was before I recognized the fact that a right wing spin on everything has a bad effect on a lot of weak minded people

    @Violet: when blogs came to be common, I actually had the incredibly bad idea that it would kill the local editorial page. I still see no reason for them, but apparently the newspapers are under the mistaken impression that they bring in money because they generate so much controversy. I suspect there are a lot of people like me that no longer buy the paper because the editorial page is so stupid.

  37. 37.

    Johnny Coelacanth

    I tuned into Nice Polite Republicans this morning, just in time to hear Bob Siegel ask, if Obama moved unilaterally on immigration reform, “wouldn’t that poison the well for cooperation with the new congress?” Your metaphorical well has been stuffed full of anthrax and tire rims, you goddaamned idiot, but thanks for perfectly encapsulating the problem.

  39. 39.

    catclub

    @Johnny Coelacanth: The problem is there is no one to answer, immediately “No, of course not, the GOP has already poisoned that well. They have no interest in solving the problem.”

  42. 42.

    catclub

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): In the past, 25% unemployment leads to mass misery and revolutions. Now Spain and Greece are managing it. I think it is due to a much better safety net. In the depths of our recession, unemployment was 10+%, which means the other 90% are still employed.

    I guess this is progress.

  43. 43.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    In my own little take on all of this, I remain perplexed at the phenomenon of people who are big fans of women’s sports voting for candidates who would cheerfully repeal Title IX.

  44. 44.

    kindness

    @Johnny Coelacanth: I’ve been avoiding NPR this week. Usually listen during drive time for my commute but I knew what I’d hear so I’ve been blissfully playing my i-pod.

    Sucks but I’m much happier. Nothing shitty coming out my speakers.

  46. 46.

    Cacti

    NRSC Director thanks defeated Dems for running away from the POTUS and the economic success of the past 6-years:

    Collins said NRSC polling had long identified the economy as the issues voters cared about most, and one where Democrats stood to gain. “We felt that that was their best message and they sidelined their best messenger,” he said. Collins added that in many states, Democratic candidates had positive stories to tell. “In Colorado, unemployment is 5.1 percent and they never talked about it,” he added.

    “They were so focused on independents that they forgot they had a base,” Collins said of Democratic Senate candidates. “They left their base behind. They became Republican-lite.”

  47. 47.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Cacti: I’d be really dubious about accepting anything that clown says at face value. How did running as an unabashed liberal and cleaving to Obama work out for Wendy Davis?

  51. 51.

    Cacti

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    I’d be really dubious about accepting anything that clown says at face value. How did running as an unabashed liberal and cleaving to Obama work out for Wendy Davis?

    Wolf embraced the President and ousted the incumbent GOPer governor in PA.

    There was no reason to run from the POTUS in states like Iowa and Colorado. I’d say it also hurt Kay Hagan in NC, which has sizeable Hispanic and African American populations

  52. 52.

    Cervantes

    @KG:

    The local papers I have in mind — the ones I find quite good — do their own investigative reporting.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    Let’s face it, Davis was a long shot. A really long shot. Much more of a long shot than pretty much any other Democrat running this time, including Grimes and Nunn. So I’m not really sure there’s a specific lesson we can take from her run, other than, A for Effort.

  56. 56.

    danielx

    The NY Times gave Frank Luntz column space for no real reason that I can figure out.

    Is that supposed to be a question? Going way out on a limb, because he’s a Villager ‘ho in good standing? Although ol’ Frank would likely deny it.

  57. 57.

    p

    ‘WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES…”
    there will finally be room for the rest of us to breathe on this planet.
    may Richard branson transport mit Romney, the Koch bros, et al, to gated bubble domed communities on mars and leave the rest of us in
    peace.
    in the meanwhile,
    I will not be brainwashed.

  58. 58.

    Belafon

    @Cacti:
    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
    I don’t think you can apply a blanket “here’s how you run as a Democrat” but there are a lot of places where Democrats wouldn’t have won anyway. And we were just going to get hammered this year. (Boy, how I wish Davis had won.)

    I’ve been thinking about how I could run as a Democrat in Ralph Halls old district, and you know what, there’s no way I could win. It will just not happen.

  61. 61.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    “They were so focused on independents that they forgot they had a base,” Collins said of Democratic Senate candidates. “They left their base behind. They became Republican-lite.”

    @Cacti: Well, there you go. An honest Republican.

    That’s some truth that fucking hurts, ain’t it?

  62. 62.

    Mike E

    @Trollhattan: Yep. Wake County Commission is now 7-0 Dems, and our local paper did a “Huzzah, they’ll finally get things done” op-ed. Good riddance to bad trash.

  64. 64.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Not according to our long missed PRAVDA(aka taco, et al). The TX governor’s race tells us EVERYTHING about the future of elections in the US and why Scott Walker or JEB!!! will be the next President. BTW, enjoy Kauai and get a medical professional to buddy tape your toes.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Adam: Also too, Charlie Crist. And it’s not in any way a negative reflection on Obama that he wasn’t a campaign asset in every single contested district! If we had an informed and objective citizenry nationwide, he would be. But we don’t.

  67. 67.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Tree With Water: I’m attacking your attitude, which is that the unemployed here should just suffer as penance. While not disagreeing that the problems are worse there and that we are responsible for them, your approach just reeks of fucking privilege. Since you are determined to wear the hair shirt, why don’t you quit your job, live unemployed, and let someone else have it.

  70. 70.

    Belafon

    @Cacti: I’m just curious, was there any evidence anywhere that this year might not turn out like every election the sixth year of a president’s time in office?

    I would actually like to buy that this year could have been fixed if the Democrats had just been more progressive, because that means that we can do something about 2018 or 2022. But I’m not really seeing anything other than the normal pattern for office holders.

  71. 71.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Mnemosyne: There is every bit as much of a general lesson to learn from Davis’ failure through embracing liberalism and Obama as there is from Grimes’ refusal to do the same: pretty much nothing. There are probably some Dems who would have been better off following Davis’ line, though I really, really doubt that Grimes was one of them. There are also probably some Dems that would have done better shunning Davis’ approach, quite possibly including Davis.

    There isn’t a general rule on this, though the landscape this year was tilted in favor of not embracing Obama relative to what was true in 2012 or will be true in 2016. And, the choice of specific case in Cacti’s post was kind of odd, since Mark Udall was not one of those who most conspicuously avoided liberal ideas. He may have chosen the wrong ones, but he wasn’t Grimes.

  72. 72.

    mai naem mobile

    I wish Obama would fucking poison the well with some Ebola! and it better be the well that serves the whole Village.

  73. 73.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker:

    If we had an informed and objective citizenry nationwide, he would be. But we don’t.

    I am so pleased I learned that reply from Adlai Stevenson;

    “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!”
    Adlai: “Yes, but I need a majority.”

    Paraphrased.

  74. 74.

    mai naem mobile

    @Betty Cracker: i gotta admit i didnt really pay any attention to Charlie Crist till he ran as governor. I know hes an opportunist etc etc but the guy’s got some talent. If Obama was smart he would appoint him to something that affects Florida – climate change related, SYD maybe something that could use his backslapping happy warrior talent. I know this is crazy but the Dems could do a lot worse than Crist as a Veep.Hes really grown on me. Also Jeanne Shaheen. Why is she not talked up as a prez candidate? She didn’t just eek out a win in NH. She was a governor. Shes just as qualified as Hillary if not more.

  75. 75.

    mai naem mobile

    @Belafon: I’m not saying it doesnt matter but i think if the dems just run somebody for every seat even if its a loss. Whats the real minimum cost of running for a seat? $200? Forget ads, yard signs? If you are in a Dem vs. Rep race, you will get coverage and if nothing else Democratic views are out there, not just GOP talking points.

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mai naem mobile:

    Also Jeanne Shaheen. Why is she not talked up as a prez candidate? She didn’t just eek out a win in NH. She was a governor. Shes just as qualified as Hillary if not more.

    If you think she is a viable candidate, start talking her up. Don’t wait for others to do it.

  77. 77.

    Kryptik, A Man Without A Country

    So which is it guys? Is Obama the leper that we need to all stay away from as far as possible so as to not to catch his failure stink that is responsible for all that’s bad now or not?

  78. 78.

    FrY10cK

    Gee.

    Zuss kryst.

    I haven’t commented here often but I read a lot and the fact that Frank Luntz, George Will, and Bill Kristol still get published makes me say, Gee.

    Zuss kryst.

  80. 80.

    Kryptik, A Man Without A Country

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Just give me something. I’m honestly ready to throw in the towel, and the exchanges here and elsewhere have lead me to believe my side has splintered into those who believe Obama really does need to be thrown under the bus for the Dem’s future and those those who believe the rot starts lower down the chain. And I’ll be on record as saying and believing as much as Obama has frustrated me with some of the stuff he does, his share of the blame compared to folks like DWS and the actual campaigns themselves should be pretty damn miniscule. Fuck’s sake, I get Obama is unpopular in a lot of areas. But face it, the D by your name is already proof of guilt to most of these folks, and running the fuck away from Obama and the accomplishments of your party has never been a winning strategy overall.

    And yet it feels like all over, the writing is on the wall that basically Obama is alone and that he SHOULD be alone because he’s the problem.

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kryptik, A Man Without A Country: First, it was an election in the sixth year of a presidency. These results are rather common. 1998 is one of the only times it hasn’t happened. Second and slightly related, the ground was was bad for the Dems this time around. In 2016, the GOP will face even worse terrain. Third, candidates who offered strong support for Obama and his policies and had him come campaign for them lost, and so did candidates who took the opposite approach and tried to keep their campaigns as local as possible. Neither approach worked, mostly, IMO, because of the first two reason I listed. Fourth, the MSM sucks,

  82. 82.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus: I get how some people might think, well, fuck, if it was going to be a loss, it might as well have been a loudly progressive loss. But I don’t see anything to suggest that there was hope for a loudly progressive _win_. And yet that’s the note that keeps being sounded. If only this, if only that. Well, no, both options were tried, and both failed, so now we’re really just talking style points.

  83. 83.

    Turgidson

    What’s being overlooked, to me, is that the Dems actually DID expand the electorate over 2010 in most of the races they tried to compete in. More people voted for Schauer in 2014 than voted for (winner) Snyder in 2010 in Michigan. Burke got about as many voters as Walker won with in 2010. Crist easily exceeded Scott’s 2010 total. Udall got more votes than Bennett did in 2010. Pryor even got 50k more votes than Blanche Lincoln did.

    But the GOP found way more knuckledraggers to turn out than they did in 2010, and ate away at the Dems’ margins, a little, among important groups (and a LOT with Asian-American voters, who went 50/50 this year after going 70+ for Obama two years ago). Given the GOP’s appalling, often outright treasonous behavior in the last four years, I find this terrifying.

    The reason I thought GOP gains would be modest (and they’d lose at least ONE of the FL,WI, or MI gov races, and Maine) was that, unlike other 6-year-itch elections where the out party is at least reasonably well-liked, the GOP polls slightly above gout, and always polls worse than the Democrats. But here we are. Damn near every single one of the 15% of Americans who actually approve of the GOP show up to vote. And a frustrating number of idiot independents and low info voters can be scared into voting for a GOP candidate because Ebolaghazisis will kill us all, even as they vote for progressive initiatives like the minimum wage, which the GOP candidate not only opposes, but would abolish if he could. Or vote down a personhood amendment while sending its most prominent backer to the Senate. How does one make sense of head-injury-stupid voting decisions like that? Much less counter it and win over some of those dolts next time.

    I don’t think any of the post-mortems are figuring out why shit like this happens – other than what we all know, which is that the blue hairs fucking always vote, and they’ve voted against That Boy in the White House and his stooges in idiotically high numbers.

    I’ll give the sick GOP bastards credit for one thing. Obama’s economic record, based on the top lines (stock market, GDP growth, job creation, unemployment rate) has been pretty strong – stronger than he ever gets credit for. But middle and working class voters don’t realize it because they’re not the ones benefitting.

    And that’s thanks to three decades of GOP/neoliberal policy, which stacked the deck in the rich’s favor up until 2008, and then, thanks to GOP treason and deficit hysteria propaganda from 2009 on, in preventing Obama from doing fuckall to provide direct and immediate relief to these people. Presidents Collins and Snowe refused to sign onto a stimulus above $800bil, which meant it was too small to fully plug the demand shortfall. The GOP then won the media war (which the Village media was all too glad to help them with), discrediting Keynesian stimulus with the electorate even as the stimulus did exactly what it was designed to do and prevented a much worse downturn. They nearly killed health care again, and the bill, while a huge improvement, is compromised and convoluted enough to be easily lied about and demagogued against even now, after it has helped millions. They refused to help pass any infrastructure or jobs bills (no, Boehner, bills deregulating shit don’t count as jobs bills). They repeatedly derailed economic progress with their default and shutdown bullshit. Aid to underwater homeowners was shouted down as a fucking moral hazard by Rick Santelli and that got more media coverage than the much more obvious, evil, and threatening moral hazard of socializing Wall Street’s losses while letting them continue to privatize their gains. Student loan reform was a good thing, but it was all Obama’s managed to do on making college more affordable. And on it goes.

    So now the millennials, which came out for Obama in unusually high numbers in 2008 and mostly showed up again in 2012, are disproportionately unemployed, forced to live in their parents’ houses, and watching their career aspirations wither on the vine with every month that goes by without a job. Six years of the Democratic president they pinned their hopes to have amounted to jack fucking squat to them. Even if they’re not stupid enough to think the GOP is actually the party that will help them, they are probably disgusted enough to go back to not caring and not voting. The same could happen with the Hispanic portion of the electorate after watching immigration reform get batted around like a balloon and then popped by Ted Cruz’s and Steve King’s fucking middle fingers.

    And if that happens, the presidential electorate starts looking more like 2004 than 2008/2012. And the GOP could damn well win with that electorate, as long as they nominate a lucid biped as a candidate (hopefully they don’t). Hillary won’t know how to (or care to, I’m afraid) re-energize the young Obama voters. I’m optimistic that Hispanics will come out for her (they preferred her to Obama in 2008 IIRC). I’m cautiously hopeful that some of the blue hairs Obama lost will be willing to vote for her, but given how the GOP turned Obama into an anchor in 2014 in spite of his successes, I fear they’ll be able to do the same to the next D nominee, regardless of who it is, enough to keep the blue hairs with them at least one more cycle. Then we could be well and truly fucked.

  84. 84.

    Tree With Water

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): “I’m attacking your attitude, which is that the unemployed here should just suffer as penance”.

    You are misconstruing what I wrote.

    You claim I believe Americans “should” suffer. That is a lie that you conjured out of thin air, and it is a rotten accusation.

    Simple Simon Says: Imagine you believe in karma, and that it applies to nations as well as individuals. Such was my line of thought in making the comparison. That’s all. If anything reeks around here, don’t look at me.

  85. 85.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tree With Water:

    You claim I believe Americans “should” suffer. That is a lie that you conjured out of thin air, and it is a rotten accusation.

    It was not an unreasonable reading of your comment.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    Sherrod Brown is taking over the Ohio Democratic Party, so something good came of this:

    Brown says retooling the party must start with strengthening the foundation and reconnecting with its members from the bottom up.
    “I think that means including strong women’s voices in leadership of the party. It means paying more attention to the African American community—to all segments of organized labor,” says senator Brown. “All the Democrats—we have a much broader party—there are many more people in the Democratic Party generally representing a much more diverse group of people.”

    I think he’s operating under the theory that he has to turn “Obama voters” into “Democratic voters” because one can’t take for granted that they’re the same group of people. It’s one of the theories I’ve heard and I like it because it’s not ass-covering after a loss by the Democratic Party and it also doesn’t blame voters, which I feel is just a loser.

    He’s pretty good at politics. He wins in a 50/50 state as a liberal and he’s been getting elected in this state since he was 28 years old. Might be time to start listening to him.

  88. 88.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay:

    Sherrod Brown is taking over the Ohio Democratic Party

    Excellent.

    I think he’s operating under the theory that he has to turn “Obama voters” into “Democratic voters” because one can’t take for granted that they’re the same group of people.

    I think there is something to that.

  89. 89.

    Bill Murray

    @catclub: In the depths of our recession, unemployment was 10+%, which means the other 90% are still employed.

    No, it means of the people still seeking work, 90% have jobs many of which are well below their abilities and background. The employment to population ratio has been essentially stagnant at 58.7 +/- 0.4% since August of 2009. This down 5-5.5% from the highest levels (in early 2000)

  90. 90.

    Barbara

    @Kay: Every now and then I call Sherrod Brown’s office and tell them how proud and thrilled I am that he is my senator. He is so terrific. I really hope he is successful at doing something, anything, with the state party because I never, ever have to feel as despondent as I did when I was filling in that little box on my ballot for Fitzgerald the other day.

  92. 92.

    Chickamin Slam

    I’ve avoided the news since the election. Every media pundit is giving wet kisses to whatever GOP member happens on by to pontificate. And by wet kisses I mean … well you can imagine.

  93. 93.

    boatboy_srq

    @Turgidson:

    Ebolaghazisis

    I am so stealing that.

    Lots of good points. For Maine, I have a special take, in a thoroughly nasty exchange with some prognut over at WaMo about how since Dems are disappointing we must need a 3rd or 5th party or something (his position, not mine). Maine got handed to LePage (again) by a third-party blowhard (again) who refused to bow out of the race despite not having a snowball’s chance in He11 of winning. Third parties are wonderful – in a parliamentary system, where proportional representation is available and where governing coalitions are not uncommon. In the US system, particularly in the midst of the GOTeahad, they’re death itself to anything like a reasonable opposition, since the most likely source of third-party votes is the Dems and they’re the least bad option for defeating the GOTea. I’m all for third parties – once the GOTea is (finally) purged of its Neoconfederate, racist, sexist, heterosexist, Christianist fever; until then, as you say, we need better journalism (i.e. less infotainment a la Fauxnews) and a more informed, energized electorate, and fewer “spoilers” who seem to do nothing but poach votes from Dems and hand elections over to wingnuts.

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