Can you say, "repudiation?"

Sure, I knew you could.

47

Even though I voted for none of the above in yesterday’s POTUS election, I must admit to enjoying, much more than I should have, watching the election returns on TV last night. As the magnitude of the rout became clear, I began flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC to see how they delivered the goods to their well-conditioned audiences. Every single liberal pundit on both networks looked like someone had just shot their dog.

Watching the rapid implosion of the liberal media complex was a wondrous sight to behold. My glee meter was pegged. Does this make me a bad person?

Even though I’ve tried as hard as I could not to use this election as a vicarious way of putting a thumb in the eye of people that I don’t much respect, i.e., the woke and the feckless, it was really difficult for me not to feel at least a sense of vindication over last night’s results. I’ve spent the better part of the last decade (among others) dispensing regular missives concerning the complete lack of self-awareness among most progressives. Finally, the chickens have come home to roost.

Survival is evidently not an instinct that is in wide supply among the left. It took a while, but their inability to read a message in the tea leaves completely lucid to most 3rd graders finally caught up to them, big time.

What message, you ask? Several actually.

Forcing people, under penalty of losing their jobs, to pretend to acknowledge that men can menstruate is a winning message to almost no one. Among the many fantasies that pass for progressive ideals, this is perhaps the most blatantly delusional.

Arguing about whether or not the illegal immigrants that you extrajudicially placed in small communities all over the country, overwhelming those communities in the process, are actually eating cats is a winning message to almost no one (even, as it turns out, relatives of some of the illegal immigrants).

Insisting that men should be able to compete in women’s sports is a winning message to almost no one.

Running on ideals that disavow everything you stood for less than three months ago doesn’t fool anyone. Word salads are ineffective in communicating most political positions.

Indicating that those with whom you politically disagree are “deplorables” or “garbage” is not a winning message with about half of the country, some of whom you need to persuade in order to win elections.

Denouncing those who don’t support your otherwise meritless candidate, whose upward mobility was almost solely due to identity politics, as racist, sexist, etc., isn’t a winning message to anyone who has ever had to actually deliver in order to keep a job.

Insistence, for the better part of a decade, that your massively unpopular political candidate lost a presidential election because of bots on social media and Russian interference isn’t a winning message—though it does, somewhat inexplicably, get a little funnier every time you hear it.

Insisting that your octogenarian president, in the sad grip of obvious cognitive decline, is “fit as a fiddle” isn’t a great way to convince anyone to believe any subsequent utterance from you.

Insisting that the free speech rights of citizens, a cornerstone of our founding ideals, are too dangerous to allow without government regulation isn’t a winning message outside of the Politburo.

Insisting that the economy is better than you think when inflation and interest rates are killing your personal finances is a message that appealed to no one ever.

Egging on a clearly partisan prosecution of a political rival over a minor business records charge ginned up into 34 felonies does very little to engender any warm and fuzzy attraction to your one-eye-blind sense of fairness and justice.

Insisting that everyone must drive an inferior electric vehicle within a decade because climate change is more of an “existential threat” to humanity than nuclear war is just daffy.

If diversity, equity, and inclusion were as great and necessary to solve all of our social problems as progressives claim, they wouldn’t have to shove them down everyone’s throat at gunpoint. When no one wants what you are selling, you can either blame the buyer or figure out why no one is buying. Option one isn’t a winning strategy.

Insisting that defunding the police is the best way to reduce crime is almost the definition of gaslighting. Dishonestly adjusting government statistics to support that point is the definition of gaslighting. Welcome, comrade!

Indoctrinating students, often behind the backs of parents, with liberal propaganda in public schools isn’t a winning message. This is another one that just boggles the mind. You don’t mess with people’s children. That’s PR 101.

Finally, the bullshitification of science to defend and support progressive causes works right up until it doesn’t. Then, you get clocked in elections. Like yesterday.

The one thing that I am impressed with so far is the relative lack of whining from the left. A lot of this is simply because the rout is so great. That, by itself, leaves little room for misinterpretation. We’ll just have to see how this plays out in the coming days and months.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com