This is actually the GOP\u2019s perfect scenario. They haven\u2019t acknowledged the legitimacy of a Democratic Presidential victory since 1976, when they were still bleeding out from Watergate. For Bill Clinton, it was \u201cwell he didn\u2019t break 50% so he\u2019s not REALLY President\u201d and for Barack Obama, who easily broke 50%, it was \u201cwell he\u2019s not REALLY an American so he can\u2019t REALLY be President.\u201d Funny how none of that mattered when George W. Bush finished with fewer votes than his opponent, but anyway…<\/p>\n
See, the GOP knows what any wrestling promoter knows. You don\u2019t want the good guy to win the title. You want the bad guy to have the title, because the money is in the chase<\/em>. So Hillary wins a historic victory – but she did it over a damaged candidate who was a fluke and a one-off happenstance, so she didn\u2019t really<\/em> win against a real opponent, so she shouldn\u2019t really<\/em> be allowed to be President. And right on cue, four more years of scorched earth and conspiracy theory and pretending the Republicans didn\u2019t just pledge their troth to a short-fingered vulgarian from Queens with a checkbook full of red ink and the morals of a goat.<\/p>\n Trump will disappear down the memory hole, the Tea Party will be recycled under some other name, and the GOP establishment will win them back onside in a heartbeat by rallying them against the menace of the Evil Bitch Empress Hillary of their quarter-century\u2019s fear-mongering. And we\u2019ll be right back where we started.<\/p>\n This, ultimately, is why I didn\u2019t have patience for the Bernie kids and why I have no time for the Libertarians or the sentient Caucasian dreadlocks that support Jill Stein. This is where our political system has left us – all a Democrat can hope to do is hold the line and stop things getting any worse. You wanna dream, go major in theater, because here in reality, we can\u2019t have the magical sugarplum new progressive Jerusalem. Not yet. We still have to grind it out at the coalface, one day and one election at a time, until the day when we can tip the balance and start to do more than just bail out the ship. It\u2019s not enough to show up and vote for President once or twice, it\u2019s all the way down the ballot. It\u2019s organizing. It\u2019s finding candidates who can move the ball and supporting them for years as they move up the chain. And if you do that long enough, eventually maybe the lion will lie down with the lamb and we\u2019ll beat our swords into plowshares and ain\u2019t gonna study war no more. But until then, the lamb ain\u2019t gonna get a lot of sleep. And neither should we.<\/p>\n November won\u2019t be the end. It\u2019ll be the end of the beginning, but there\u2019s a long way yet to go, and you\u2019d better be ready for a long, long haul to come.<\/p>\n What are you prepared to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is actually the GOP\u2019s perfect scenario. They haven\u2019t acknowledged the legitimacy of a Democratic Presidential victory since 1976, when they were still bleeding out from Watergate. For Bill Clinton, it was \u201cwell he didn\u2019t break 50% so he\u2019s not REALLY President\u201d and for Barack Obama, who easily broke 50%, it was \u201cwell he\u2019s not … <\/p>\n