I realized I passed my 20 year anniversary on this site last spring(1). Throughout this amazing stretch of time, Daily Kos has been a constant presence in my political life; a rock or a ship upon the sea, whatever metaphor you choose. Sometimes I comment here frequently. Sometimes I have not much to say. Sometimes I don't have much to say for months (or even years) on end. But I'm always here, reading diaries, at least once a day. My first order of business every morning (without fail!) is abbreviated pundit roundup.
So it was at 7 PM Tuesday night, when the results of Virginia came in, I exclaimed to no one in particular: “Fellas, it's been good to know ya." I’ve been through enough of these losses as a Democrat to know when things aren’t going to turn out well.
This time was different, worse.
The summer of 1988 long precedes Daily Kos, but that was an inexplicable failure of the Dukakis campaign, essentially taking the rest of the election off and failing to answer Roger Ailes and what would morph into the right wing ecosystem we know today. In 2000, the press ganged up on Al Gore, and Ralph Nader convinced people there was “no difference” between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Florida was a surprise, but no one had expected Al Gore to win days before. Similarly in 2004, when John Kerry played by the Marquis of Queensbury rules with a brass knuckled Bush campaign, nobody had expected Kerry to win. He had trailed most of the campaign. In 2010, we watched the media become infatuated with the Tea Party, and again in 2014. 2016 was a little different. We were at the apex of data journalism, all of which predicted a slight Clinton win, even as that sanctimonious Comey had done irreparable harm to her campaign and the Nation. When Clinton lost, we consoled ourselves that parties don’t usually win three terms in a row, and maybe Trump would be more moderate. Fast forward four years and a million lives lost due to Covid amidst a recession with 15% unemployment, and we thought we were done with Trump, who was facing down multiple legal challenges. Trump has only deteriorated since he left office, and his legal implications only mounted. So 2024 was the rematch that shouldn’t have been a rematch. Never has there been a contest between so wholly qualified and so dangerously unqualified. I was vexed that the polls showed this race too close for comfort, but Donald Trump was never popular in his one term. There is a ceiling to his approval, or at least there had to be.
There was a great rending of faith in America upon realization that Trump would not only win, but win comfortably.
Every previous Democratic loss there had been an excuse to justify the other choice, but this time? This was an act of madness, of selfishness, of cruelty. In that one moment, I lost any faith I still had in this Country. In a time of full employment and peace, the contest against this horrible human being should not even have been close. It turns out, no, we as a Country are not better than this.
An early “tag line” for Daily Kos was a “
reality based community”. In hard times, I always envisioned the Daily Kos community as a ship (or life raft) of reality upon a sea of malicious nonsense and rightwing propaganda. I don’t have many interactions with MAGA anymore. I’ve shaped my later life to avoid conservatives at all cost. But I did have a conversation with someone regarding the imperative of restoring Donald Trump to the White House. “Gas is $8 a gallon!” they exclaimed. The cost of gas is killing them! I tried to explain that gas is currently under $3 a gallon, even here in New York City. No luck. The price of gas is astronomically high, they claim, and it’s smothering them. I calmly and kindly exclaimed that they could walk outside and see the prices on the nearby gas station. “Well, it’s $8 a gallon somewhere!” they angrily yelled at me. And that is what swamped me Tuesday night. The Country is gone, lost to fake news. You can’t have a democracy and misinformation. And with the anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, I envisioned getting swamped by a sea of misinformation and being pulled under.
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(1) I changed UIDs once. I’m not even sure why.
