Let Down
The midterms are over. I feel let down. The donkeys won the House. The elephants won the Senate. The game ended in a tie. Nobody beat the spread and will continue to pay the vig to live in a house divided. Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided cannot stand.” I disagree. “A house divided can stand, so long as someone sleeps on the couch.”
There was a lot of media build-up to these midterms. The electorate on both sides of the aisle wanted the window seat. The gloves were off. Political pundits predicted a hell of a fight. TV commercials were nasty and hit below the belt. One commercial after another accused the other candidate of sleeping with the enemy, shipping jobs to the enemy, letting in the enemy or walking in a foreign caravan rather than driving a domestic one.
After six weeks of vilification, I disliked all the candidates. What happened to decency? I remember a gentler nation when the rules read, “Let the best man win.” That’s not the game now. We’ve morphed into “Let the best man be discredited more.” Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will really hurt us.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. There’s a lot more of us swinging and punching. This year’s voter turnout was 114 million compared to the last midterm of 83 million. More people than ever got their punches in. And as far as we know, they were American punches unlike prior elections where foreigners got in a lick or two million.
What now? Can TV networks replace lost political ads with “My Pillow,” “My Hemorrhoids” and “Your Erectile Dysfunction” ads? I doubt it. I’m hoping with midterms over there will be less advertising and more television programming, returning to new episodes of the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Barstow. Ugh. We should be careful what we wish for. Let’s just take our medicine and be thankful for more hemorrhoid commercials and your erectile dysfunction ads.
The midterms are over. It ended in a tie. More people than ever have picked a side to shout for whom and for what they stand for. The national resentment level has been counted and documented. Will we now, as a nation, shake hands and say, “Nice fight,” or will we skulk away sore losers and plot out our next revenge match? I’d like to think that we’ll shake hands and move forward in a bipartisan fashion, but…my inner voice tells me to expect to be let down, again.
I guess, “A house more divided can stand, so long, as we keep adding couches.”
Crantz tells the Indy that he believes politicians make strange bedfellows and should be a boon to the sofa sleeper industry.
