Thursday, November 6, 2008

The View From My Ass. Post Election Edition



What else needs to be said?

Barack Obama is the nations first African American President elect. He won by 7 and half million votes and a probable electoral vote of 364-174. In other words to everybody this side of Todd, Maddow and Novak this was an ass-kicking.How decisive was it? Barack Obama won Virginia, North Carolina, ( yeah it's not official but we know he did) and Indi-fucking-ana. and if A Republican loses Indi-fucking-ana it's an historic ass kicking.

The Emotions Of The Most Important Election Of My Life Time.

I am, I think it's obvious, an emotional person. Generally speaking with events that draw on my emotions they follow a pattern. Confidence turns to doubt as the time grows nearer to where I am a wreck by the time the thing starts. This election was different the opponent was different. For weeks I was confident. I knew we were going to win. There was no way we were going to lose. if we lost we were not going to lose. I wasn't about to let those mother fuckers see anything other than confidence. Not cockiness but confidence. It was time to send the message to the Republican party and it's followers that we could not be stopped. Especially since for the first time in 16 years I sensed that they were the ones who were scared. The night before the election as I wrote I felt good. I knew Americans were going to send a message loud and clear and they we weren't going to like what Americans had to say. Tuesday I was jovial. I woke up and got a hair cut. At the barbers he said no politics ( I said I am fine with that) but when he said he wouldn't be able to watch the returns I told him it will be over at 10 and another customer said just so long as it's not Obama. I thought man are you going to be pissed. I just laughed. I knew I would be happy and he wouldn't.

As the day wore on I just had the over-whelming feeling of happiness. Until about 6 when the returns started...then the nerves came in droves. Only once did I get "slightly" depressed when Virginia looked iffy for the longest time. But after they called Pennsylvania I knew things looked good. When they called Ohio I screamed. After that it was pretty much a victory party. After Barack Obama was declared the winner I had a sense of...that was it? I got all excited for that? It's strange it was almost a let down when it was over. No doubt I was thrilled but there was just a sense of...wow that's it. a whimper. However the feeling I thought I would have last night hit me tonight. The We did it exuberance. The great feeling that Barack Obama is elected...George Bush and neo-conservatism is defeated. It's not dead. We can't kill it. (it will eventually commit suicide) but for now it's defeated. That's when the real happiness kicked in. And conversely notice the trolls, the losers. After they sobered up and figured out that they no longer held America hostage they were pissed. Last night was a real awakening for the Conservative followers. They found out they aren't naturally entitled to power and we are no longer going to roll over and give it to them anymore. They are taking it hard. They have been on Newshounds with their personal attacks and insults. They have been here with their personal attacks and insults. They have insulted me ET, Yakki and Jonathan. I have deleted or edited all of the ones I have found. Sudden irrelevance is tough to come to terms with. I suppose I should have some compassion for these folks...but I have none.

Congratulations To Barack Obama.

A black man with the middle name Hussein just became President of the United States. Let me repeated that. A black man with the middle name Hussein just became President of the United States. There is only one way that ever happens even following the most incompetent presidential administration in American history and running against an opponent that promised more incompetence. The Man busted his ass for 20 months and went out and won it! He didn't wait for his breaks he made them. he had the punches dodged before they were even thrown at him. Granted he had the experience of Gore and Kerry to guide him but Gore and Kerry had the experience of Dukakis to learn from and they didn't learn a damn thing. For all of the hand wringing that came from the elections of 2000 and 2004 that effects Democrats to this day maybe just maybe the election of Barack Hussein Obama sent a very valuable message to Democrats and the Democratic party. The opponent is vicious. The opponent will lie. cheat and still to protect what's theirs. And the way to combat their lying, cheating and stealing is not to sit around and wait for them to fuck you over while you are worried about getting fucked over. The way to combat it is to work so hard they can't take it from you. I have know doubt 2000 was stolen. Maybe 2004 as well. But we let them get away with it.

Look at 2000. For all of the talk about Florida people forget Gore lost New Hampshire. Win New Hampshire and Florida is a non issue. What about Tennessee? Gore and Kerry are wonderfully great people both of them. but neither worked hard enough to overcome the deficit they each faced. don't tell me their deficits were greater than being a Black man named Barck Hussein Obama. Gore lost with 8 years of prosperity to run on and Kerry ran against the same failed policies that Obama ran against. Obama wasn't going to be defeated and he wasn't going to sit around worrying about it happening. If we learn nothing else form the Presidential election of 2008 then we should learn this. If The referees call 3 touchdowns back it doesn't matter if you are 6 touchdowns ahead.

MSNBC The Good The Bad And The Ugly

I watched MSNBC last night and I would have to give them a solid B over all for their nights work. I thought it was pretty funny when Chris Matthews said that a large percentage of the African American vote in South Carolina came from African Americans. It was actually a Republican Mike Murphy who had the line of the night. "I'm doing some back-of-the-envelope math with Dr. Smirnoff in the little room they have me in back here"

But I have come to the concussion that the two most worthless people on last night for MSNBC were Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow.

Chuck Todd was wrong so much that he shouldn't be allowed with in 50 feet of a TV set again. And Maddow is just...well pathetic.

Todd offered these tidbits...

The Obama folks have to be very worried with Virginia and very happy with North Carolina! ( Virginia ended up a very nice 5 point victory and North Carolina still hasn't been called)

This election looks remarkably like 2000 and 2004. ( except the Democrat won by a large margin)

Looking at the map this going to be a closer election both in terms of the vote and the electoral college than we thought). ( Wrong on both counts but at this point.. whose counting.)

Amazingly after the ass kicking was almost complete Chris Matthews repeated the last line of bullshit. thankfully by then even Rachel Maddow was convinced Obama had won decisively.

His final moment of idiocy was when he said the people at Grants Park shouldn't celebarte too much when Obama won Pennsylvania a point that his partner in bullshit Rachel Maddow agreed 100%

As for Ms. Maddow over on DU every other thread is about Maddow. Half love her mainly for the fact that she is an out of the closet lesbian. The other half like her but can't stand her. the half that loves her often thinks the half that doesn't doesn't on;y because of her sexual preference. Until last night I didn't come down on either side of the issue and just hid all of the threads. Now I am firmly in the personally like her but can't stand her column firmly. To the point that I doubt i'll ever watch her show again.

Her First talking point last night was Obama was going to lose because he spent too much money in Indiana and North Carolina and Virginia and he wasn't going to win them just come closer. Her second talking point was that Obama wasn't flipping any red states blue. after that I had decided that Rachel Maddow is everything I hate about DU. The worrying, the consternation, the constipation, the actual belief that she was put on this earth to be a loser and there was nothing or nobody that was ever going to change that. I don't know if she ever said anything positive last night or tonight on her show. After she went out of her way to bring every single Democrat who should have been the happiest people on earth down to her natural level of 100% negative pity I had all I could stand of Rachel Maddow.

Not everything went great last night.

There were some disappointments on an otherwise great night. Iowa though it went blue sent that nut Steve King back to congress. Minnesota sent uber-nut Michelle Bachmann back to congress. Kentucky re-elected ole shifty Mitch. Ted Stevens will probably get re-elected though he can't serve because he's a felon. And it looks like Norm ( I'll sue you) Colman will survive thus leaving Bill O'Reilly with at least a sliver of a reason to live.

From The AP's Typewriter To CNN's mouth.

It's amazing how quickly I read a talking point from American Pravda and then hear it from the Conservative News Network. here were today's talking points. Obama is going to lose his popularity unless he does something about America's problems seemingly before he gets elected. he's too popular and will be perceived as a failure no matter what. and finally this classic. This election shows Obama will have to govern from the middle and not be a Liberal. No shitting the media is saying this. After a night when American elected large majorities in both houses and a Democratic President the media took this to mean that American people aren't ready for Democrats. I wish I were making this up but you know I am not. I am becoming more and more convinced the planet our media lives on is not earth. George Bush wins an election by a Ohio he has a mandate. Obama wins an election by 190 electoral votes and it's a sign America just isn't so sure. Go figure.

Some personal satisfaction.

John McCain won Nebraska by a margin of 57% to 41% this is actually another sign of just how badly the Republicans did last night. If you went and found some hobo cleaned him up and called him a Republican he would win Nebraska 60-40. McCain could not even pull that off. The two biggest cities Omaha and Lincoln each went blue. Yes America. I am now a part of Sarah Palin's Faux -America. First time since 1964 Omaha went blue. Omaha also voted for Jim Esch for congress over Lee Fuckwad Jr. Unfortunately district two in Nebraska is not only made up of Douglas County (Omaha) but Sarpy County which is the suburbs. And they went red. Putting Lee Fuckwad Jr. back into congress and making our electoral vote a toss up at the moment. Appropriately the biggest town in Sarpy county is called Bellevue because that is where people who vote the way they do belong. In Bellevue. Still having Omaha go blue was no small personal victory for me. It's a great feeling to be able to say i live in Blue Country. But Anderson Cooper swears that having a Republican struggle to win a decisive victory in Nebraska and losing it's two biggest cities is not a mandate for Barack Obama to govern from the left. He swears it.

Whatever get's you through the night.

I'm not going to say anything nasty about Bob Novak his time on earth is short and he's entitled to deal with the emotions of this election election anyway he chooses. he could just insult everybody anonymously on message boards the way every other Republican seems to be coping with his pain but instead he wrote this whopper...

WASHINGTON -- The national election Tuesday was not only historic for the election of the first African-American president in the nation's history but also for how little the avalanche of Democratic votes changed the political alignment in Congress.

The first Democratic Electoral College landslide in decades did not result in a tight race for control of Congress.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt won his second term for president in 1936, the defeated Republican candidate, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, won only two states, Maine and Vermont, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by wide margins.

But Obama's win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.


Again Novak's old and sick. I won't insult him. But if 7 and a half million votes and 190 electoral votes isn't a mandate or a landslide...then I really don't know what is.

It feels Good.

Once again after a Bush, A far worse Bush than the last Bush, America has called on Democrats to clean up the mess. The Bush family has been really good to the Democratic party. But we must learn from both are opponents and Barack Obama. From our Opponents we must learn that the thirst for more and more unchecked power while throwing obstacles towards those who oppose us or keep us in line will bring about a painful and powerful demise like the one the Neo-cons are feeling today. And from Barack Obama we must learn that of we out work everybody and do what is right we will be almost impossible to stop. I wish my Dad was here for this moment. Last night I posted a song for him he used to sing When the exact moment Nebraska would make the decisive play to win a football game. It's a quirk I picked up from him. He would be so so happy tonight. I think he knows and he's happy anyway.

I sign off with

KTF which means Keep The Faith. I am sure you figured that out by now. Anyway

Keep The Faith. Especially now that you have a reason to.

Count Istvan

Stephen

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

One other point I forgot to make. Notice when it was over and it was time for concessions how the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates conducted themselves. I think they showed who they both really are.

McCain gave a wonderfully classy concession speech that hit all of the right notes was really one of his best campaign moments. Sarah Palin on the other hand gave an interview where she was Sarah Palin until the end.

Anonymous said...

Did you notice thought the next day interview where Gov Palin was holding Trig and wearing a cheezy cheap sweatshirt? Could not help but think she had to return all those fabulous cloths.


BTW I had 351 for the prediction. I was pretty close. But as an former watcher of the price is right is would not have won

Anonymous said...

Great post Count. This election success brings me one step closer to quelling a general sense of malaise that washed over me beginning in the year 2000 (queue Conan O'Brien). I have become a vindictive person over the last eight years and watch the extremists on the right side with joy as they flounder, point fingers blaming everyone for their loss, and ungraciously accepting defeat. F' 'em.

Anonymous said...

I have become a vindictive person over the last eight years and watch the extremists on the right side with joy as they flounder, point fingers blaming everyone for their loss, and ungraciously accepting defeat. F' 'em.

I agree. If you watched the McCain Palin rallies it's a sad fact that the dogfuckers and 08's are not just some lunatic fringe but a sizable chunk of the GOP base.


BTW I had 351 for the prediction. I was pretty close. But as an former watcher of the price is right is would not have won


I had 318. Less than what many republicans had. neither of us went over so maybe we both win. By the way speaking of PIR. I know Bob Barker couldn't go on for ever but man Drew Carey sucks.

Sergei Andropov said...

"Her First talking point last night was Obama was going to lose because he spent too much money in Indiana and North Carolina and Virginia and he wasn't going to win them just come closer. Her second talking point was that Obama wasn't flipping any red states blue. after that I had decided that Rachel Maddow is everything I hate about DU. The worrying, the consternation, the constipation, the actual belief that she was put on this earth to be a loser and there was nothing or nobody that was ever going to change that."

Sounds a lot like your opinion of the Democrats until fairly recently.

By the way, she's accepted that it was indeed a landslide.

Anonymous said...

I don't know how to answer that Sergei. I have never been a fan of the defeatist attitude of many Democrats. She seemed to be the last person to figure out, well her and Chuck Todd, that this thing was going to be anything other than what is was.

It's good to know that Maddow finally let herself appreciate Obama's win. I am sure she's moved on to her next worrisome subject.

Anonymous said...

I am on record as saying Democrats find ways to lose. Like sitting around waiting to lose or worrying themsleves into a loss. I stand by that. I don't know if Maddow (whom I personally like) is the problem or the symptom of the problem. But I do know I am sick of it. And I didn't need to hear it Tuesday.

Anonymous said...

I voted for the 351-375 electoral votes in your poll, Count. Feels pretty good to be right! :)

I share most of your sentiments (I still like Rachel Maddow...) but there's one more thing that deserves highlighting about the way Obama campaigned. He used humor, and he used it very deftly and artfully. None of the heavy sarcasm that comes off as mean-spirited - as we saw so often from the GOP - but a restrained and gentle humor that let all the mudslinging just roll off his shoulders.

I think he first started to find that voice in the primaries, esp. in PA when Clinton was going on about learning how to shoot and he jibed "she thinks she's Annie Oakley." It put the silliness of the issue in perspective.

Then, later on, he met some of the GOP claims with the stump speech line "No, that's really what they said. I mean...they must think you're stupid!" In addition to defusing whatever the claim-du-jour was, it exposed the cynicism of the opposition's say-anything, do-anything approach, and it also gave Obama's audience license to laugh back with him, in the same "oh-come-ON-now" tone. And, as we know from dealing with the trolls, being laughed at or ignored are not things they cope with well.

And of course the humor only became easier and easier in those final weeks, with lipstick-on-a-pig, the trainwreck interviews from Palin, and our friend Joe The Plumber.

It was a smart, effective tactic. Added to which...won't it be refreshing to have someone in the WH whose idea of humor isn't, say, looking under the furniture for WMD?

- - - -

One last observation. There's a lot of talk about why Faux and the like are throwing Palin under the bus. I think it has to do with the RW media's cynicism and the now highly-exposed gap in the GOP's ranks. It's largely been an awkward, polarized marriage between big-business plutocrats and those at the other end of the economic/educational spectrum who have been persuaded to side with them on a cultural basis only. A party that helps the rich get richer on everyone else's backs while being held together by the illusion that, say, a New England frat boy is actually a down-home rancher; not the product of incurious privilege, but folksy and genuine.

The GOP has looked the other way on that incongruity for years. And the likes of Faux certainly has, too. As a network they operate on the "there's a sucker born every minute" premise, and in Bush's "base" they hit a mother lode.

Then along came Palin. Someone who really is one of that base - slim intellect, sparse experience, fundie religiosity, the whole package. Dress her up in a little Valentino and, bingo, thought the wingnuttosphere, she's our new rock star!

The trouble is that the GOP bigwigs and their pet media can't have someone who is really one of their base headline their ticket. They're used to keeping that base in line with bread and circuses, like the worst of the Roman emperors. You can't do that successfully if you actually allow them to control the party machine. Who do you then exploit and pander to?

I'm not sure they can backpedal as far or as fast as they'd like to from Palin, though. The mob mentality that has been stirred up these past weeks is pretty strong, and it's tough to turn a wolf back into a lapdog. It was refreshing to see McCain try, in that concession speech, but the blow that splinters the GOP part may already have been dealt.

Not that I am complaining about this for a schadenfreude-full moment. Except in that it potentially leaves the wingnuttiest among them without a moderating influence: that's a bit scary.

Not scary enough to stop me from grinning, though. The world is full of possibility again, and we've worked hard for this breath of fresh air. From here, we start fixing things.

Anonymous said...

(Only Anonymous because I did not sign up)

While Obama did have a strong win this year it was far from a landslide. It seems like no one (especially the press )can remember that we only need to look back to 1980,1984,and 1988 to see what a real landslide victory looks like.

1980 Reagan 489 electoral votes
Carter 49
1984 (here is the big one)
Reagan 525 Mondale 13- he won one state

1988 Bush 426
Dukakis 111

Obama did have a stonger win than Clinton did in both '92 and '96.

Clinton won '96 with 379 to 159 but Ross Perot threw a wrench in the election for Dole (and Bush in '92).

In '96 Perot received over 7 million votes and in '92 he captured 20 million votes, Ross Perot is the only reason Bill Clinton became President in 1992.

Obama's win was definitely the strongest win of any democrat since LBJ trashed Barry Goldwater in 1964 but BO did not win by a landslide. There have only been two Democratic presidents since LBJ with BO being the third.

Total Pageviews