I suppose I should say something about the elections. It’s incredibly frustrating, to be honest: Mitch McConnell vows to go scorched earth, fight everything, make Obama a one-term president, and then six years later gets a majority in Congress because people are fed up with the obstruction and check out. Which is really the secret, because the low turnout is what put the GOP over the top (in addition to the disproportionate vulnerability of Democrats defending seats won int he 2008 Obama victory). The Democrats have to figure out how to make people turn out in the off years and not cede the field to the aging racists on their Medicare scooters forwarding scare mail about immigrants to everyone in sight.
I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be at least one shutdown attempt and one impeachment attempt in the next two years. They’ll find some excuse. Forget everything you hear about the “moderate Republicans” or the “grownups” – there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the GOP and the Tea Party, there never was, and the successful laundering of the Republican label in the wake of 2008 while going even further to the right is one of the amazing mysteries of our time. Ted Cruz is driving this bus, folks, and he sees the 45th President every time he looks in the mirror. And don’t underestimate the chance of Clinton Fatigue dragging Hillary down to the point where he – or another of his neb-confederate pals in Amen Corner – finds himself in the Oval Office on January 20, 2017.
Better days are coming. They can’t live forever. The only catch is, can we last long enough to ride it out.