Well, if you've followed my political prognostications, you may be wondering how I did. Hint: I'm keeping my day job.
First, the Good. I pretty much got spot on the Senate. I predicted a Republican of two to five, and I believe they got six. I also said only one to two of the Tea Party extremists would get through. The only real radical to win was Rand Paul (I guess it pays off to have your staff stomp a woman's head and to kidnap a woman and force her to worship a bong). You could make a case that Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) are Tea Party candidates. I don't know, I really think they're more Republicans using the Tea Party label, but c'es la vie.
Second, the bad. I predicted the Tea Party, despite losing a great deal, would have their political prowess pumped up beyond their numbers by an over-excited MSM. And that has been exactly the case. CNN has been talking about them as if they were large and in charge, not like they'd lost over 60% of the races they competed for. As for whether or not the TeaParty, once they realized they don't have the clout they thought they would have, will turn to louder, more, shall we say, second amendment remedies, only time will tell.
Third, the horrible. Yes, I messed up the House prediction BIG TIME. My bad. At least my prediction was unique, right. Uniquely wrong, but striving to look at things differently sometimes makes you look like a genius, and sometimes you just look sad and vulnerable. Oh, well. Those few who commented on my prediction (all from facebook - although I'm working hard to make this blog a must-read site - so far it ain't been pretty) though I was indulging in wishful thinking. Well, it's all perspective, I guess, but I don't really see it that way.
My delusion wasn't wishful thinking, my delusion was Mr. Spock. I tried to look at things through cold, rational eyes, and I couldn't find a logical reason why that many districts would turn to the group that caused all the destruction in the first place.
On facebook, a few days before the election, I did revise my projection of losses to up to 33, which is still a puny number compared to the sixty-plus that occurred. I failed to fully realize the impact that a flood of Citizens United freed money would do. A combination of money from rich corporations and wealthy individuals and foreign powers (and yes, also money from TeaParty enthusiasts and social conservatives -but that money doesn't bother me - that's normal politics) overwhelmed the normal political process. And I forgot that most of these districts were gerrymandered by Republicans in 200o to favor Republicans - most of these districts just returned home to their beloved overseer.
I was correct that the districts lost would be overwhelmingly blue dog ConservaDems. Why vote for a fake Republican when you vote for a real one? The Progressive Caucus lost only a a couple of members (I will miss Alan Grayson - however, I must admit his Taliban Dan thing went too far). I also anticipated that the TeaParty would lose a lot.
There were a number of truly horrifying results. Probably the worst to me was Florida electing Rick Scott (involved in the largest Medicare fraud in history) for Governor. I'll discuss more later.
I don't know where Progressives go from here. I'm not really sure what happens to the country. I'm scared to the core. Just the climate change issue alone is making me lose sleep. But, I'll try to go more deeply into those topics in a future post. In the meantime, I would be very happy to see your comments, even from my conservative brethren.
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