End of the World? Hardly

It’s all about 2012 now.

Forget reaching across the aisle and working together in harmony for the good of the country – the sole aim of John Boehner and his pal Mitch McConnell from now until 2012 is to make the Obama Administration look inept, corrupt or any combination of the two.

Watching the midterm election returns was excruciating and not just because the Democrats took the beating every political expert – and American history itself – predicted they would. ABC News gushed that it was a Republican “tidal wave.” The New York Times called the results “historic.”

Not really. With few exceptions the party in power gets thumped in the midterms. In 1958 Ike Eisenhower’s Republicans lost 48 House seats and 9 Senate seats; in1992 Clinton’s Democrats lost 54 House seats and 9 Senate seats and watched control of both houses pass to the Republicans.

Obama’s Dems lost 60 House seats but retained narrow control of the Senate despite the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Given the terrible economy, which, please remember, was brought to us by almost continuous Republican misrule during the last decade, the Dems should have taken an even worse drubbing.

Watching the Republicans and the Tea Party nuts the other night was no less side splitting than a Saturday Night Live skit. From Christine O’Donnell calling utter defeat a victory to Crazy Carl Palladino wielding a baseball bat to John Boehner weeping as he described how he worked his way through college, it was hilarious theatre. (Side note: Is it just my twisted perspective or does Eric Cantor from Virginia look like he was sent from central casting to play a diabolical Waffen-SS colonel? That dude scares me – he’s got neo-fascist written all over him. Outfit him with jackboots and a riding crop and he’d happily stomp the shit out of gays, lesbians, illegal immigrants and union members.)

John Boehner, let’s not forget, is one of the most corrupt members of a corruption-ridden body, a man who boldly handed out checks from tobacco industry lobbyists on the floor of the House and was shocked when the propriety of his behavior was questioned, a man who has been in the breast pocket of Corporate America since he was elected to the House in 1991, and a man who wouldn’t know a small business owner if he tripped over him on his way to the tanning salon.

Euphoric with victory, one Republican after another mouthed the same old tropes: tax cuts, small government, free enterprise, capitalism, founding fathers, the American people have spoken, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah – like 2000 and 2004 all over again. The GOP sings one tune and one tune only but give them credit for mastering that one song and convincing voters that people like Boehner, McConnell and Cantor care as much about average people as they do about their corporate benefactors.

Though Republican fingerprints are all over the current economic mess, voters took their frustrations and fears out on Barack Obama and the Democrats. This is the way the political game plays in America. Media barons and leading talking heads are making full-throated unanimous calls for Obama to move toward the political center, as if he has been living on and governing from the extreme left edge since 2009. This is pure hogwash, of course; is it possible that many Obama supporters from 2008 stayed home because their man has operated too far to the right?

Obama hasn’t helped his cause much over the past twenty-one months: he ceded control of the all important narrative to obdurate Republicans and Tea Party fruit loops, reacted too timidly and tardily on the economy and jobs, surrounded himself with Wall Street flunkies, failed to explain why health care reform was critical and how it would make the lives of real Americans better, and time and again tried to make nice with Republicans who had no intention of reciprocating. Obama clings to the hope that he can persuade the GOP to compromise the same way a cheetah clings to the throat of a gazelle.

It will get ugly now. Come January House Republicans will rule Congressional committees and have subpoena power – and you can bet they will not hesitate to use it. What will Obama’s Whitewater be? How much time, effort and taxpayer money will the Republicans piss away chasing every whiff of scandal?

Election night was long and dark and the forecast for the days and months to come calls for more of the same.