So, much has already been said about this campaign and much will undoubtedly be said still as the days and weeks roll by. I spent the first couple of days after Tuesday reading everything I could get my hands on, left and right articles, but especially ones on the right. I figured that there will be plenty of time to cheer later, and since I don’t have an intrinsic distrust of the mainstream media like a loon, I was correctly convinced that the numbers were breaking for Obama.
But the right was interesting. So many articles by so many people said about a million different things. Lots of them were waaay the fuck out there, like Sandy killed Romney’s chances, or Rove saying that it was Democrats who suppressed the vote (even though he didn’t mean it like actual voter suppression like the Republicans do it). A few seemed to get it, that they needed to court minorities and not actively turn people away, but those articles eventually ended with a shift back to the right, claiming that it was simply the delivery that was wrong and not the message. They just don’t get it.
But I’m glad about another thing, one that I haven’t heard many people talk about. This was a challenging campaign season, to say the least. It was ugly and nasty, lead by a filthy liar in Romney and his shadowy superPACs. Unlike how McCain took the microphone away from a women claiming Obama was Arab, Romney began his campaign with lies and distortions and then doubled down on them. Remember early in the year when a Romney ad quote Obama out of context where he said that if they talk about the economy, they’ll lose? And how everyone pointed out that it was simply Obama quoting McCain? And in 2008, the McCain campaign put the stop on many demonizing attacks of no merit, telling his surrogates not to bring up the Jeremiah Wright stuff since it was completely irrelevant and underhanded.
I’m glad Obama won, but more importantly, I’m glad HOW he won. He didn’t have to resort to outright lies, he didn’t have to utterly demonize Romney for irrelevant and pointless issues. Republicans will disagree, bless their hearts, but they’re wrong. Obama attacked Romney for what he actually did. Romney ran on his record, and then Obama would point out that he fired people, outsourced jobs, and tried to go conservative in a blue state where his veto was overridden. Romney was so scared to run on his Massachusetts record that he barely mentioned Romney care at all, except in the context of repealing Obamacare. And when leadership was required in Libya, Romney tried and failed to blame that on Obama. Where Israel couldn’t simply be handed a blank check to do what it wanted, Romney said Obama was throwing them under the bus. Where he was simply asked to go do some rah-rah events in England, he insulted them over the Olympics. Every single issue where Romney and Obama differed, Romney was wrong, and came out looking like a fool or worse
What I saw what Romney unleashing the most despicable lies and outright distortions on the President, never giving him credit where its due, never admitting fault, and his superPACs backing up each ugly little lie with more of their own. So much money was put into the race in such a vile manner by the conservatives. Like the Asian caricature ad against Debbie Stabenow. Like telling Tammy Duckworth she was talking about her service too much. Like calling Obama a muslim, foreigner, America-hating socialist, marxist, fascist. Like parsing the semantics of rape and telling women they rape easy. Like calling women sluts for using medicine. There’s of course lots more where that came from.
I have little faith that this loss will mean Rove’s (or someone else’s) coffers will be empty the next election. It’ll probably grow, as we’ve seen that even the supposedly smart rich people financing the superPACs were in the end, utter morons and completely deluded into thinking they had a chance to win and that their guy was up 5 points and will win in a landslide. Honestly, if that doesn’t prove how rich people can sometimes be stupid fucking idiots, I don’t know what does. I don’t care that Sheldon Adelson has billions. He got lucky, he’s a moron if he thought Newt Gingrich was the savior of the Republican Party. I don’t care how much money Foster Freiss has, he’s dumber than a bag of oranges if he thought Romney was going to win in a landslide.
So even if this election won’t stop these rich delusional goobers from funding more races in the future, at least losing this badly meant that the whole money = winning connection didn’t get supported. Maybe some will give a little less next time, or maybe one or two will decide not to give at all. And we will have at least some barrier against the belief that its ok whatever lie you say, as long as you keep saying it and say it louder than the other guy. Sometimes, voters call your bluff. Sometimes they see through the bullshit.
If Obama had lost, and maybe if some of the Senate races were lost too, then this kind of thing will be even worse times 10 next time. But he won, and he did it in a classy way without the tsunami of negativity that Romney tried to do. So maybe, just maybe, next time things will get a little better, or at least the negativity won’t sink quite as fast. $400 million is a lot of money to lose for just one senator. Maybe hire a couple workers in your factories next time, assholes.