Two Big Take-Aways from Last Night

I could write a lot about the importance of the elections last night or what went wrong and what went right, but I'm honestly in no mood. I'll summarize my thoughts like this: if you spoke to me two years ago I would have told you that the Republicans will take Congress back in 2010, and I'd be happy about it.

Of course, in the meantime the Republican party has become a vile piece of shit pressured by some of the most self centered people in the country to be even more vile, so I'm no longer happy about what happened. The Contract with America and the Silent Majority ended up being good for the country, even if they didn't really achieve their goals. I have a hard time believing that the Tea Party and whatever you want to call their radicalized bullshit will yield similar results. Back to the point...

Two things stand out in my mind more than anything else from last night:

John King needs an election results screen to be happy.

I mean, good for you, John. You looked so enthusiastic last night. I was delighted to see you in front of the touch screen again. You can point, click, pan, zoom, circle shit, and even write on it. You looked so very at home. I hope you have one of those things in your bedroom. If not, get one soon because I have a feeling you'll never be happier.

We don't have to worry about hard line Tea Partiers winning too many big races.

While they may be able to take individual districts and push the House far, far to the right last night showed that the larger the population is the less well the TP group does. In other words, every Democrat should be hoping for a strong TP influence in the next Presidential cycle. That will make Senate races easier to win (even Sestak almost won and he was running from the left, I have no doubt that Spector would have taken that race). More importantly, a radicalized, half-literate, batshit crazy Republican candidate or running mate guarantees a Democrat win for President.

The biggest proof of this is in Nevada. Reid was terribly unpopular. Almost anyone could have beat him. Sharron Angle is an extremist. She's not politically savvy. She has few populist views. She only came close because Reid has been demonized for the last two years, especially by Faux News and the conservative radio alternate universe. The Republicans worked hard to trickle this agenda into more mainstream and center targeted sources, at the very least presenting it as such that some hidden group of moderates was actually unhappy with Reid's specific performances, never mind that they were really unhappy because they were out of work and the only way the government can create jobs in a recession is through deficit spending, something the Republicans were set against even though it was the backbone of Reagan's fiscal policy. Yet, they were unable to beat him despite years of electioneering against him.

We'll see more of this. Definitely. It'll be like this in 2012. When it is, in an election that should have far greater turnout, we'll see even more defeats of radicalized Republicans. And it will be good.