We're All Brandon Now

I takes a big man to admit when he's wrong, so let me start off in praise of myself, acknowledging my wrongness from exactly one week ago in this very space. But I should also chastising myself for my cynical defeatism. Although to be fair, it wasn't really defeatism in a dark or negative way, just more of a preemptive defensive crouch against the droning, oncoming swarm of small cable-news and twitter-troll stinging insects who want nothing more than to be swatted by you. Later what I'll probably really dig into is the last sentence, a blindly obvious case of rationalization-by-way-of-overly-complicated-and-thus-still-obscure metaphor.

What I actually said last week was:

For now, let's brace ourselves. Election Day will probably be a total shitshow, the way all midterm elections are for the party of sitting presidents. But we'll hear about how it actually means something about the country turning rightward even though a few million more people on the whole will have voted for Democrats, as per usual. I'm sure I'll have something snappily nihilistic to say about it next Thursday.

Welp, it's hard to be too snappily nihilistic when you can't get the nihilism part off the ground. It is true that the sitting president's party is going to net-lose seats in the House, but it's still very possible (if maybe not entirely likely) that Democrats retain control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. Less a wipeout and more a wobble on the board, on at best an ankle-slapper of a wave.

Honestly... I'm not really sure what to do with that. As it normally happens, a new president rolls in with coat-tails overturning or strengthening control of Congress, then two years later, you get bowled over in the midterms. The narrative then becomes bewildered confusion at how, after just two years, this young administration is aflame, doomed to ignominy and the perdition of limping to inevitable defeat when the crucible of a re-election campaign finally burns away what pathetic, charred remains might have remained barely animated on the corpse.

But wait! What's this? Actual time occurs between one midterm election and the next presidential election! Two years is just enough time to craft, deploy and maintain a new bullshit political narrative to satiate the press and supplant the previous one that was decided on like four hours after the last polls closed. The beleaguered, arrogant* president now has a foil, a foundation to build on: the Obstructionist Opposition! Think of the paradise denied to all of us because the condemnable Speaker and/or Majority Leader and their pernicious legion, all of whom will star in the grainy, black-and-white, shadow-darkened campaign adds with the LARGE RED TEXT, doing the uncouth unthinkable and automatically gainsaying anything proposed by the other party. Unprecedented! Help stop the gridlock in Washington with your one-time donation of minimum $7, but hopefully more, assuming you actually love America! I mean, you do, don't you?

And then in the end, we're basically back to where we started with the presidential party's dip in form more or less leveled out, both sides spend the whole two years raising a disgusting 10-to-11 figure amount to spend on electioneering and then, just when we're maximally exhausted, the election arrives, everyone on TV is professionally SUPER SURPRISED!!! by the result and then we start the next cycle, all over again, immediately.

I mean, the votes aren't even all counted yet and we've already started the next one.

I'm doing my best to ignore that braying and honking and just bidin' my time still. I'm still not sure where the pockmarks and oases are going to be on this new landscape as it is remade, in a familiar steam and fume, right under our feet. All I really care about is whether or not my gross blood-tick of a congressman gets booted. Lucky us, we get to be one of the late-coming deciders in this narrowest of narrow-run things. I don't love it, but at least it's something different.

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*Remember the one with the tan suit? NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET!