Dodging a Bullet

First among my many thoughts regarding this election is that we dodged a bullet with more clearance than expected. One potential catastrophe we averted involves the composition of the Supreme Court. Two of our four guys have some mileage and are likely to be replaced in the next four years. Then there’s the Affordable Health Care Act, slang for Obamacare. Some of its modest benefits were postponed, at Republican insistence, until 2014 so the public would never know what it had missed when the new president signed its repeal. I also find it heartening that the effects of Citizens United seem to be subject to the law of diminishing returns. The president’s crew did a superlative job as it did four years ago, even going as far as to prepare a concession speech just in case, something that his opponent neglected. Maybe he didn’t realize that 47% were the people voting for him

Republican incivility has increased drastically in the last four years, coinciding with the debut of the Tea Party which coincided with Obama’s inauguration. As I’ve mentioned, these primitives are receiving short shrift from the partnership. The “job creators” like Romney and his surrogates couldn’t care less about abortion. A few words here and there spoken with a reasonable facsimile of conviction are all that’s necessary. This is not to say that the deal comes at no expense to the party establishment. Its cost was evident in the election. As I see it the scenario is almost literally Faustian.

Where the Republican Party goes from here is anybody’s guess. Mine is that insulting Obama will be phased out. They’ve already played the race card without much success. But I expect them to remain merciless when it comes to his agenda. They’ve been behaving as if any new law benefiting the nation was detrimental to their chances in this year’s election. I can’t see that anything has changed regarding 2016.

Some Republicans are blaming their loss on Sandy and it’s obvious that its consequences worked to Obama’s advantage. If one accepts the premise that a hurricane is an act of God then I guess it follows that God is a Democrat.