What Happened?

 

I don't know about you, but I was happy to see this election season end, which came to an end with a THUD.

I was prepared to wait a couple of weeks to learn who was going to be the 47th President. Remember "the hanging chads"?  (Which would have been a great name for a folk group in the early '60s. "And The Cafe Wha presents....The Hanging Chads!")

But, it was all over by 2:00 in the morning.  We re-elected Donald J. Trump. 

Think of it.  How bad to you have to be to lose to a blubbery, loudmouth, misogynistic, egotistical Fascist with bad hair like Donald Trump?  That's gotta hurt.

But to paraphrase Jim Geraghty, the Democrats would have had a chance 1) if illegal immigration hadn’t surged, 2) if inflation hadn’t been the worst it’s been in four decades, and 3) if the world weren’t on fire from The Middle East to the Ukraine.  Other than that, the Dems had it all going their way.   

In the past ten years, I have learned about the term "gaslighting," which means anything a conservative says that contradicts something a liberal says.  Conservatives are bad gaslighters because they want to hurt people and crush their dreams. 

But it seems to me that the Democrats spent a lot of the Biden Administration gaslighting us. Inflation wasn't that bad. (Biden said, "Inflation ain't bad, pal, come on.")  It wasn't a surge of illegal immigrants, it was just friends we hadn't met yet from south of the border. The President is not senile; he's just walking around D.C in his pajamas like Uncle Junior because he's a man of the people. 

It really isn't hard to understand why Kamala Harris lost.

One, to cut Harris some slack, it is hard to get a campaign up and running in the amount of time Harris had.  Sure, she had help from a overly solicitous news media,which bought her campaign's malarkey about "brat summer", but the nuts and bolts were not in place and at the end Harris took in a billion dollars but ended the campaign $20 million in debt. 

I guess Skittles, rainbows, unicorns and vibes are expensive. 

Two, Harris can give a speech and she pulverized Trump in the debate (she is a lawyer, after all) but that's about all she could do. She did terrible in interviews, both friendly and unfriendly, when she deemed it necessary to give them. When asked a question about what she would done differently than Biden, she said she couldn't think of a thing. As we would say at Wheeler High School in the mid-70s: Duh.  Let's see, maybe not let so many illegal immigrants in?  Maybe care more about the price of eggs and gas? If you're telling people you are a new way forward, maybe don't tell them you wouldn't do anything different. I'm just spitballing here.

Three, I don't know what Harris saw in Tim Walz to make him her running mate.  He was a total doofus who made Dan Quayle look good.

Fourth, the Democratic Party's "lawfare" totally backfired because voters realized the indictments were not about bringing a rouge President to justice; it was about trying to injure Trump politically.  Its main point was to put Trump on trial and to get him convicted as a felon, even if the "felony" was novel meaning nobody had ever been tried under it as a felony before.  All of it had the opposite effect, making Trump even more popular. 

Our Fourth Estate is supposed to be a neutral observer and fair arbitrator, calling balls and strikes.  They didn't do any of that.

I have been saying for years (the first time was in 2021) that there was something off about Biden. If I, as a lowly blogger, could see it, you know the White House press corps saw it. They didn't say anything because Biden was on their team. 

When he crashed and burned after the first debate, Democrats had to push him aside if they wanted a chance to win. Because Democrats fiddle-farted (sorry for the technical terminology) around, they were left with no choice except to nominate Vice President Harris, who, let's face it, never made a good impression.

She gave it the old college try, but it wasn't enough.

Now our betters in the media are stuck in this rut saying they can't understand why the majority of American voters went back to Orange Benito except to say the Trump voters are dumb, stupid, racist, ignorant, poopy-heads that don't deserve to be blessed by our greatness at a Thanksgiving meal.

I am part of the generation that used late-night television hosts
as a gauge to the zeitgeist of the time.  Can you imagine Johnny Carson bawling about George McGovern losing the '72 election to Richard Nixon?  Joey Bishop having the sniffles that Hubert Humphrey lost? No, but Jimmy Kimmel and Colbert acted like it was the day after Pearl Harbor. 

Clearly, they don't care that there are people out there, a majority, who weren't enamored with The Democrats this time.  It happens. 

Social Media was its usual hit-and-miss. You had those posting memes that the LORD had made Trump President again. You had those posting long posts pronouncing SHAME on those who had the audacity to vote for Trump.

Look, I have voted in every Presidential election since 1980. That's eleven elections. The candidate I voted for won six of eleven times.  I believed in my candidates and thought they should have won (still do). But guess what?  George H.W. Bush didn't win re-election. Bob Dole didn't win either.  Sometimes, your candidate fails to win for a variety of reasons that are out of your control.

Despite what some say, there'll be a mid-term election in 2026 and another Presidential election in 2028. Trump will be term-limited from running for re-election.

Better luck next time, Dems.