Election 2012 Wrap-Up

Election 2012 is now history, and what a historic night it was.  Barack Obama was given four more years to continue his leadership and his efforts to repair the economy after the 2008-2009 collapse.  We can look forward with great satisfaction for continued health care reform and one, maybe two, Supreme Court appointments, which is a huge, huge deal.  The news media were all predicting that the presidential election would be a nail-biter clear into the next morning, but in fact the election was called for Obama shortly after 9pm.  When Ohio was seen going to the president, it was all over.  To no one's surprise, Florida is still undecided because it seems as if it's impossible for them to have an election without a lot of fuss and hoo-hah and delay.  Florida is the Drama Queen of the nation.

A number of other regional races took on national significance, and a lot of them did go the right way.  Elizabeth Warren, a very capable, intelligent and resourceful woman, took the Massachusetts Senate seat away from empty mannequin Scott Brown.  Drooling, knuckle-dragging religious bigots Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who gained national infamy with their astonishingly ignorant opinions on rape and abortion, went down in flames, and deservedly so.

In non-office related elections, three states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - approved marriage equality, and another state, Minnesota, turned down an initiative to ban it.  All wonderful news, and milestones in what I believe is the inevitable march toward full marriage equality, something that absolutely should be a basic American right.  Also the first openly gay Senator was named, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.  In Illinois, Tammy Duckworth ousted loathsome dirtbag Joe Walsh.

As always there were disappointments, and not surprisingly a lot were in Arizona.  This benighted, ignorant state chose greasy, buck-toothed scam artist Jeff Flake for the Senate seat occupied by the flabby, flatulent Jon Kyl.  Ancient, bloated media whore Joe Arpaio was reelected Maricopa country sheriff for the hundredth time, thanks to all the senile old fools in Surprise and Sun City, all the anti-immigrant bigots and literally millions of dollars which poured into Arpaio's campaign coffer from out-of-state right-wing PACs, who seem to see Arpaio as a conservative (read: racist) icon.  Still undecided is the contest for new Congressional District 9, where I live, and I'm hoping Kyrsten Sinema will pull off a win over perennial Uncle Tom, Vernon Parker.  I'm also hoping for Anne Kirkpatrick to win over payday-loan-pimp Jonathan Paton in District 1.  And late today, Anne Kirkpatrick was declared victorious in her contest.

Also very much on the plus side is that AZ Proposition 204, which would have permanently extended the 1% sales tax, went down in flames with 65% of voters saying no.  This tax was passed a couple of years ago on the promise that it was only to be a temporary increase, and greedy special interests in this state thought it would be easy to make permanent.  They thought that people would go for anything that nominally was portrayed as helping school children, but voters in this state weren't snookered by this charade and rightfully told them to go pound salt.  Also, Proposition 120 the "sovereignty" amendment, a ridiculously blatant and stupid attempt by the state legislature to take control of public lands, also went down very decisively.  So, there was a little bit to be thankful for in this wretched excuse for a state.

There were some really funny things that happened last night.  Apparently Fox News - Stupid News For Stupid People - was one of the first outlets to declare Obama the winner.  One of their commentators, the execrable Karl Rove, went completely batshit crazy ON AIR, frenetically blathering about and trying to grasp any kind of straw, real or imagined, to deny the outcome in Ohio.  He looked like a gigantic, bug-eyed catfish who was yanked out of the water and was gasping and thrashing around.  Then, one of Fox's newsskanks trotted off stage and stumbled back into their "Decision Room" to confront the number-crunchers with the news that Karl Rove did not approve of their pronouncement.  The number geeks practically told her to GTFO, because numbers, unlike everyone on Fox News, do not lie.  Ohio was definitely Obama country.

But to me the most amazing and inspiring thing was that despite everything the Republicans tied to do to steal this election - lies, misinformation, voter suppression and intimidation, pathetic, un-American attempts to restrict poll hours or early voting times - everything they tried to do was to absolutely no avail.  Most amazing were the American voters who stood in line for an extraordinarily, unbelievably long time (as long as seven hours in some cases) but would not be deterred by Republican skullduggery and dirty tricks.  They were going to cast their ballots and would not be denied, and as a result, democracy itself would not be denied.

Political pundits are already furiously dissecting all of last night's happenings and assigning blame and credit as they see appropriate.  In my opinion, the Republicans lost the presidential election for two reasons:  1) a pair of profoundly unattractive candidates at the top - Romney and Ryan; and 2) a party which has been co-opted and corrupted by right-wing extremists who made the party very unappealing to the more moderate American electorate.  The Republicans thought this election was going to be a cakewalk - they just had to repeat the word "economy" over and over like a mantra and the voters would flock to them - but much to their dismay that did not happen.

Complicating matters for them was that Romney was such a repellent, off-putting candidate who was his own worst enemy.  His infamous "47%" remarks kind of scuttled his candidacy at a crucial point, and his own chronic, incurable awkwardness and creepiness turned many voters off, even on a subconscious level.  Scrawny, big-eared geek Paul Ryan did not really help much.  It seems the Republicans have a really amazing talent in picking very unattractive, unappealing candidates for their elections.  They did so in 2008 and thoughtfully repeated the same mistake in 2012, and for that I thank them very much.

Everyone, including me, was fretting about the unprecedented flood of anonymous, untraceable money that was poured into the process by the horrendous Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling, but much to my surprise, American voters - not known for being particularly discerning or resistant to idiotic campaign rhetoric - were not swayed by sham super-PACs with lofty, misleading names like "Americans For Prosperity" (because who in their right mind would be against prosperous Americans?) and "Club For Growth Action" (whatever the hell that means).  Quite a few super-wealthy billionaires - casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for one - dropped a huge chunk of change on Romney's campaign, and essentially threw their money down a rat hole.  I wonder how much good that money could have done, donated to food banks or domestic violence shelters, instead of being utterly wasted on a political campaign.

By Anne Romney's own statement, she and her husband are through with politics.  We can only hope we've seen that last of that corrosive, elitist, hatchet-faced old trollop.  Initially her role in her husband's campaign was to "humanize" him to the voters and make him seem like a regular person.  In the end, Anne Romney was the one who needed "humanized," because her presence and role in the campaign proved to be a major misfire.  She needs to just throw on one of her pioneer smocks and go be a good little Mormon wifey.  It's hard to humanize someone who lacks so very much in terms of basic humanity, and maybe her next dancing horse can do a little jig to make her feel better.

America dodged a huge bullet (more like a thermonuclear warhead) when Romney lost.  I can barely imagine how unspeakably awful and horrible a Romney administration would be.  Our nation would have become a weird, Frankenstein-like hybrid of theocracy and oligarchy, with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich becoming the norm.

If I can be indulged for a little bit of tooting my own horn, I wrote in an entry on this blog called "This Just In: Time Marches On," dated almost a year ago November 15, 2011:

"My prediction is that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and will go against Obama in the 2012 election....Obama will coast to his second term."

If you don't mind my saying...  Nailed. It.