FIRST, "November 2" is the dateline, but the only evidence that it's 2010's Blame the Democrats routine from Indiana's Top Democrat is that he name-checks Healthcare instead of Insufficient Warmongering, Sore Losermanism, or Hummers From Interns. Let the record show, Your Honor, that this man was supposedly on Candidate Obama's short list for VP. That fact alone should have made the race closer than 53-46.
Second, the worst news I got last night was not that Bayh would be replaced by Dan Coats, a stuffed pig who now goes back into the legislative wholesale business after ten years as a purchaser's rep; ain't no change at all, so far as I'm concerned. It wasn't even the return of Harry Reid, which galls not so much because it's Harry Reid, though that's bad enough, but because it reinforces the easy, comfortable, and utterly refutable on its face notion that the American voter is savvy enough to reject the clinically certifiable, if only by a narrow margin.
[By the way, Reid's reelection has given me an idea which will fix the Senate, a simple procedural change: just require every Senator to be in his seat at all times while any one of 'em has the Floor. We won't need term limits--we may need metal detectors--and we won't need new filibuster rules. We'll just need the threat of listening to Harry Reid, e.-fucking-g.]
No, the worst news I got was that Mitch "Pretender" Daniels bought himself a Republican majority in the Indiana House, which will, by the Wolf Moon, have begun to finalize the Californication of Indiana, excepting that there's no brake here on reduction of services or corporate giveaways or protection of the environment. Our insanity is too profound and earnest to be entertaining.
And the interesting distinction here is that Daniels, bless the black hole of corporate buggery where his heart's supposed to be, actually spent a portion of his graft pile to elect other Republicans. Granted he did so in his own interests, which may be charitably described as "getting himself elected President, and hence the hell out of Indiana before its notoriously time-addled citizens get wise". Daniels spent money to make money; Bayh has just built himself ever bigger counting houses for the last three decades. He reportedly turned loose (was perhaps embarrassed into turning loose) a mil for his designated Democratic heir Brad Ellsworth, posed for a couple pictures, and vamoosed (same as he did for the 2004 and 2008 gubernatorial elections) while corporate Republicans (but I repeat myself!) pummeled the man into submission for six fucking months. Here's how bad things are in Indiana: the eleventh hour appeals for Ellsworth featured the shade of Lee Fucking Hamilton; evidently they couldn't coax Jim Baker to stand with him in a show of dishwater bipartisanship. The Chair recognizes the Right Honorable Birch Evans Bayh II, though it wishes it couldn't:
It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate.
The Reader's attention is directed to the results of the 2006 mid-term elections, and the landslide 2008 Presidential election that installed a man who's middle name at the time was "Change", not Hussein. The Reader is asked to explain what th' fuck could've been clearer? In present political terms, 2006 was a knockout punch, 2008 a whitewash, and a--pardon me, remain seated--"filibuster-proof Senate" was an Act of God. Which, as it turned out, could be repealed by Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. Who knew?
Talk of a “political realignment” and a “new progressive era” proved wishful thinking.
Yeah, boy, that must've rankled. First time in the history of the Republic that back-to-back historic realignments of both Houses was considered a call to end business as usual.
Exit polls in 2008 showed that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives and 44 percent as moderates. An electorate that is 76 percent moderate to conservative was not crying out for a move to the left.
Let that sentence wash over you long enough and we'll make you an honorary Hoosier.
Ladies and gentlemen: this is a man who was elected Governor of Indiana as a Legacy pledge, who came out on election night to announce his admiration for Ronald Reagan, and who didn't take it back 24 hours later when the bright light of a leafless dawn hit him right in the Dom Perignon* hangover. He's been dining at the taxpayer trough his entire adult life; he's amassed "campaign" funds estimated at between $11-13 million, and his wife pulls down the GDP of Tonga annually for her expertise in directing pharmaceutical companies. No one can point you to a single thing Evan Bayh has done in twenty years, and now he's taking early retirement, better fixed than a Hall of Fame shortstop whose career spanned the same decades. Two terms in the Senate, and all he ever did was make sure he could collect campaign contributions for reading fucking exit polls.
We also overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession. It was a noble aspiration, but $1 trillion in new spending and a major entitlement expansion are best attempted when the Treasury is flush and the economy strong, hardly our situation today.
Unlike back in '99, when the Bayh Universal Healthcare Initiative Bill passed by acclamation.
And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent.
Jesus Fuck; I don't think I need to remind anybody that the main reason it took until 2010 to deal with this collection of Republican Talking Points was that 2009 was given over to placating the likes of Evan Bayh on the serious, morally-correct and economically-wise matter of reforming our healthcare system, nor that he's one of the main reasons it couldn't be done unless the insurance companies wrote the bill. Gays in the military? Kinda sorta being not totally opposed to the idea, provided they're not Too Gay, is a recipe for election disaster? Enshrining the Bush Tax Cuts for all but the wealthiest 2% of Americans is political suicide? Then, forgive me: when th' fuck will it be time for these "legitimate issues" and "noble aspirations"? When they no longer appeal to the Evil Left? Once the Republicans have returned us to economic good times? When that 2%'s the only people left who can afford your wife's patent medicines?
Christ, what's wrong with Democrats? How many fucking times a day do you look in the mirror, Senator?
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* intended as a paragon of Knowing the price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, not as an endorsement of the most over-priced brand name on the champagne, or any other market, period. Buy two bottles of Veuve Cliquot. Buy one bottle of Krug if you want to show off.
on the contrary, the reid-angle race was a choice between the lesser of two certifiables. had the republican nominee been even marginally sane, reid would've been toast.
ReplyDeleteDoghouse, well-said.
ReplyDeleteSecond only to the loss of the Indiana House and what that means for redistricting was the amazing and stunning and mind-numbingly incomprehensibility of the asshats who voted in the hustings defeating EVERY school bond.
Let's see if we can walk this through. Our Governor, who wants to be President so he can't raise money or spend money, tells us that we need good students to serve our corporate masters. He and his cronies then rig the budget so that rich people in Meridian-Kessler can pay less property taxes and in the process slash education spending (including, amazingly, higher education).
The schools, chronically strapped for funds to pay anyone but administrators, go to the public to authorize maintaining their budgets and the very assholes who nod along with the somnolent CEO when it comes to education, defeat the bond issues for schools, thus dooming their children and grandchildren to grow up even less well-informed than they are.....
In the future all I see is all of them sitting by a wooden stove, drinking homemade liquor, listening to a Colts game on a beat up radio (playing in a Stadium they paid for, but cannot get in to), and nodding about "no one ever got a job from a poor man." It's self-perpetuating!
I have two choices for my son: have him leave Indiana for a polity which can sustainability self-govern itself or raise him to attempt to join the plutocracy...
Dang, that's no choice at all....where do I send him?
PS At least my school system had the wherewithal to do their bond in the Spring when all the angry white men were doing something besides ruining their collective communities' future.
I'm too cheap to buy Krug.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm pretty sure I'm on the "extreme" left. I don't feel even remotely placated.
ReplyDeleteI'm always rather confused when people go out of their way to include facts that directly contradict the point they're making.
ReplyDeleteBy Bayh's own logic, 66% of the voters are moderate to liberal. That's a majority!
Well, Evan, an electorate that's 66% moderate to liberal is not exactly crying out for a lurch rightward, either.
ReplyDeleteI would like to invite the distinguished gentleman to eat a bag of...can we say dicks on the Internets? Dicks.
First, I'm with KathyR. What bone was I thrown, exactly? And all I wanted, all I really wanted was for the grownups to be in charge. I am not now, and have never been, remotely fucking placated. (And I was totally willing to be; ready, even.)
ReplyDelete(n.b. I, too, am fond of the delightly compound juxtapositional expletive "Jesus Fuck.")
Second, while Cliquot is delicious, it suffers from the same problem as Dom: it's produced by a multi-national luxury goods mega-conglomerate. (Drink Champagne Pierre Peters if you can find it; it's cheaper and better, and awesome to boot.)