After it was clear that Ohio had rejected right-wing Christian fascism and voted to enshrine the right to abortion in its state constitution, President Joe Biden released a statement, and it was “All we do is win, biyatches.” Or more properly:
Tonight, Americans once again voted to protect their fundamental freedoms – and democracy won. In Ohio, voters protected access to reproductive health in their state constitution. Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide. This extreme and dangerous agenda is out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans. My Administration will continue to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law once and for all.
Democracy won. He echoed that on Twitter: “Across the country tonight, democracy won and MAGA lost. Voters vote. Polls don't. Now let's go win next year.”
To be clear: There was no result last night that was bad for Democrats. Most were good. Some were incredibly good. (Democrats flipped a Trump +35 district in the New Jersey Assembly!)
We didn’t get Mississippi’s governorship (and weren’t particularly expecting to), but now we’re wondering what would have happened if they had just run a fucking Democrat who supports abortion rights. And we’re looking at how abysmally low turnout still is in Mississippi and seeing opportunities we hope others are seeing, considering Tate Reeves only won by five points.
But yeah, it was a good night for Democrats, for Joe Biden, and for America. Yes, we did say for Joe Biden! We regret to inform you that he has not resigned in shame after last night’s humiliating victories.
Last night on MSNBC Symone Sanders-Townsend said, “I think a lot of people owe Joe Biden an apology today,” and we’d like you to watch this clip from start to finish, from the first word to the part at the end where Michael Steele can’t hold back his giggles at the way Sanders-Townsend is calling conventional wisdom pundits huge fucking idiots:
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: We cannot negate the messenger. […] I think a lot of people owe Joe Biden an apology today. Because, honey, I watch the news, I was sitting on some of the panels. The people had very critical words for the president! He needed to drop out, he needed to mmmmmmmm, now, I don’t know!
It’s impossible to do justice to what she just said there in a transcription. It’s the combination between what she says and Steele’s reaction, it’s just [chef’s kiss].
But yet the pundits have already pivoted from “Joe Biden is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!” to “The Democrats just shockingly [not shockingly if you understand anything about America right now — Ed.] had yet another great election night, and for that Joe Biden should feel bad, because according to polls, which are the same as elections [No — Ed.], he is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!”
Let’s just make fun of the New York Times as a stand-in for all of it, because if you’re going to make fun of vapid horserace live-blogging masquerading as journalism, you might as well dive directly into the rankest of the horseshit. (You can check out Playbook afterward, obviously.)
Two days ago, before last night’s elections, in a story about choo-choo trains:
President Biden, perhaps Amtrak’s most famous advocate, announced $16.4 billion in funding for rail projects on Monday, exhibiting a business-as-usual approach as polls show him trailing former President Donald J. Trump one year before Election Day.
How dare Joe Biden go about the work of being the president, when this questionable poll we just pulled out of our buttocks says maybe he might not be president after the next election, which is a year away?
And now that the election has happened:
President Biden is unpopular, but the winning streak for his party and its policies has been extended through another election night.
Those are literally the words in the sub-headline. The first lines of the piece are, “The political potency of abortion rights proved more powerful than the drag of President Biden’s approval ratings in Tuesday’s off-year elections, as Ohioans enshrined a right to abortion in their state’s constitution, and Democrats took control of both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly while holding on to Kentucky’s governorship.”
TRANSLATION: We, the Beltway Political Pundits Of America, hate Joe Biden and think he is old, and we are not able to examine American politics any deeper than asking the World Almanack Of Facts which guy is the oldest, but honestly for real, for real? We miss covering Donald Trump, because he honked horns and made balloon animals, and sometimes he hurt us but that’s OK we like pain. Why do Democrats just keep winning elections? We would investigate what we’re missing here — maybe ask questions like “Are there voters for whom there are more important issues besides whether Nate Silver thinks Joe Biden is old?” — but we don’t wanna!
There’s a lot going on here, enough to fill many articles, but this horserace garbage has got to go. Because what’s happening isn’t some unknowable mystery. Some of it consists of:
It’s still negative partisanship, stupid, just like it was in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms. Americans hate those Republican motherfuckers’ guts and they hate their attacks on democracy and they hate their white supremacism and they hate their lunatic obsessions with weird things like the fuckability of M&Ms and they really super hate it when illegitimate partisan hack Supreme Courts steal their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. And they are waking up.
It’s also the demographics, stupid. Every year’s electorate is different from the last, and every year that passes gets Republicans closer to the year the demographics fully throw them off a cliff into a bottomless cavern, never to be heard from again.
Also if you really want to babble about daily poll-tracking, our personal theory is that there are some people who complain to pollsters, especially when the question is about approval, but many of them will vote for Biden anyway. Many of them weren’t really voters to begin with. We don’t think it’s the big deal some people think it is. Meh.
So there we are.
Democrats won. Can’t wait for the New York Times’s ledes when it happens again next year.
“Despite the fact that we hate him and he never even gave us a free pony, Joe Biden was re-elected in a historic landslide …”
Or something. They’ve got time to figure it out.
[White House / Some New York Times Shit / video via Acyn]
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The media can't understand that we know Ol' Handsome Joe is old, but we will crawl through glass filled dog shit tunnels to vote for him over any republican.
We don't have to love him, worship him, or pray to him. We just need to not vote for those fucking guys.
I'm looking over the results for Mississippi and quite honestly, Tate should be on his stubby little knees praying that he came away with a victory. A lot of stalwartly Republican counties were perilously close (including Tate's home county of Madison, where he was only +4). Brandon even won some counties that I would've never in my life expected (he was +7 in Grenada, which is about as white and religiously wingnutty as could be expected). Of course Tate ran the coastal counties but, as we've seen in Florida, beach folks are by and large batshit insane and 1000% right wing nutjobs. I'm not surprised that Brandon lost, but Tate didn't win by much AT ALL. So maybe there's hope for Mississippi after all.