the 2006 mid-terms: catching up

Sometimes I stifle my words, with my desire to fastidiously document my sources-- in part because I value solid documentation as a corrective to the wind of gaseous punditry that asks you to take all sorts of crazy-ass assertions on faith and authority, and partly because I guess I'm just like that. Today however, I'll just make some fairly general remarks, although I may add links later, in a subsequent post about the subject(s) at hand.

It's been 10 days since the election, and look at all that has happened in these past 10 days! Election day started with the pall of the recent corporate media meme about how it was beginning to look a lot like the democrats might not survive a late GOP surge in the polls, and ended with the essential certainty that the democrats had taken the house and looked likely to take the senate, pending the results in erstwhile red Montana and Virginia. Sanctimonious opportunist Joe Lieberman got his nasty self reelected, and nobody in the poll-examining-happy major media speculated about whether Bill Clinton's endorsement(which he didn't withdraw after the primary loss to Ned Lamont) had anything to do with that. Nobody speculated about erroneous exit polls either, presumably because the only Massachusetts Liberal© running was Teddy Kennedy, a safe bet for reelection. No other reason.

Then: empty cowboy hat George Allen folded like a Dixie® cup, after sufficiently large numbers of Virginia voters decided that in spite of teevee news hectoring, they could actually tell the difference between biography and fiction. Considering that he was at this point the very axis about which control of the senate pivoted, I couldn't help but think how odd it was that a little birdie would warble in his ear: "concede." Yes, other explanations are mathematically possible, but it was beginning to look like a narrative was unfolding...

cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.