Why This Loss is Different

I finally have a moment or two to put down some thoughts about last night.

I’ve noticed some of like mind say that this is not a disaster.  There’s been bad elections before, and our system of checks and balances will do its job and preserve our republic just fine.  I do wish they are proved correct, but I beg to differ.

Last night is different because of the voters and because of the President they re-elected.

I’ll dispense with the latter first and quickly.  I’ve long and frequently noted that Obama has a totalitarian streak.  He has already shown a propensity for running over the Constitution and its checks and balances.  Obama is dangerous in large part because of his disregard for Constitutional checks and balances.  And now that he no longer has the accountability of an election, his disregard will become more evident and consequential.

But what saddens me more about this election is what it says about what Americans have become.  With all the information available, it does not take a great deal of effort to know the kind of President that Obama is.  And yet they re-elected him.  (I say “they” because I sure as heck did not re-elect him.) 

This is different than 2008.  Thanks to a feckless news media, you had to dig a little to find out about Obama.  But now he had a record and a horrific one.  It’s different than 1992 and 1996, too.  Clinton hid much of his liberal-left agenda in 1992, and had already run to the center (and wisely so) by 1996 after the spanking he got in 1994.

This time, voters had no such excuses.  Obama’s first term record is clear for all to see.  And he certainly has not run from it to the center.  And yet, they re-elected him anyway. 

To be blunt, the electorate acted more like Venezuelans than Americans.  Yes, that is harsh. (And don’t give me “RACIST!” crap.  I’m referring to culture, not skin tone.) But rest assured I say that with more sadness than anger.

Greg Griffith spells out some of what this election says about what American voters have become:

How could anyone who had drunk in even a sip of the disgusting actions of our president even entertain the notion of re-electing him?

My answer didn’t come immediately, but it came soon enough. The answer is this:

- There are millions of voters who can’t tell you that Benghazi is in Libya, can’t tell you that our ambassador was murdered there, can’t even point to Libya on a map.

- There are millions of voters who, while perhaps being able to tell you that our ambassador was killed in some sort of attack, are wholly ignorant of the administration’s fecklessness and perhaps traitorous culpability in all of it.

- But the most important answer is this: There are millions of voters who can be sat down, and have it explained to them exactly what happened, and fully comprehend the disgusting failures of leadership and morality of the Obama administration… they can look at the photos of the men who died fighting in Benghazi and have at least some understanding of their honor and courage and sacrifice, and look at the photos of Barack Obama partying with Beyonce and Jay-Z beside a champagne tower… and they prefer the champagne tower. They prefer the depravity of Barack and Beyonce and Jay-Z to the honor and courage and sacrifice of the men who died in Benghazi.

And combined, those millions of voters outnumber the ones who cannot conceive of preferring depravity over honor.

We could run the same exercise using other questions of morality - photos of partial-birth abortions, for example, or the indignity of the poverty and insecurity that results from socialism - and we would get the same results.

Sad, but true.  And regardless of what Obama may or may not do in his 2^nd term, what the American electorate has become does not bode well for our nation’s future.

As I concluded last night, it was a dark night.  And it’s about to get darker.