WebVan, eToys, Mase, Kaiser Chiefs, M. Night Shyamlan, Alex Pettyfer….
What do those six things have in common, aside from the fact that maybe you’ve never heard of them, or, if you have heard of them, barely remember them (except for maybe that M. guy in the middle)? That’s what they all have in common. Those are all names of things that are supposed to be as ubiquitous in yoru daily conversations as, say, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Sam Cooke, or Google. Okay, so maybe not that ubiquitous, but still, they were supposed to be names you didn’t have to wrack your brain to remember. And the reason for that is because you were told, at one time, by the establishment whatever that those were The Next Big Thing. But they all flopped. Some flopped because they were too overhyped at the beginning and could not live up to the expectations set for them, and some because they bought into the hype and created their own downfall through hubris.
I say this because the Democrats won some very big symbolic victories last night. Yes, they were actual victories, but they were symbolic in that, after a disappointing post-trump-inaugural showing in some congressional elections, voters finally seem to be growing weary of all the winning they have been doing under trump.
But I don’t say this simply because of those victories. I say this because I’ve been seeing a lot of lefties doing a bit of over-celebrating over these victories over the past 12 hours or so. It’s like going a little overboard celebrating a touchdown when you’re losing the game.
These victories come on the heels of some damning stories about the DNC nomination process revealed by Donna Brazile that seem to indicate that Hillary Clinton purchased her 2016 nomination, and some very angry DNC cheerleaders who are condemning not the process for being corrupt, but Donna Brazile for exposing it. The irony in this is that the people condemning Brazile are some of the same people condemning the trump administration for their corruption.
And no, I am not saying that the accusations against Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC are the moral equivalent to the trump administration, but I am calling out those lefties who demure from attacking the right on deontological grounds who then turn a blind eye to corruption in their own ranks because, quizzically, they refuse to condemn their own party for any misdeeds, especially after a contentious primary against Bernie Sanders in which the party loyalists sanctimoniously chastised Bernie supporters for throwing their support behind what they presumptuously declared a lost cause, and then became indignant after Clinton lost after claiming she was the only one who could defeat trump.
And before anyone throws Russia out as an excuse, Russia could not have done this alone. Clinton did not lose for one single reason, and had she been a stronger candidate and had not arrogantly concluded that she was going to coast to victory, then it’s possible that Russian’s influence and meddling would have been too weak to make a difference.
I don’t begrudge the left their victory lap after yesterday’s election results, but I am cautioning them. The electorate has a very short memory, and yesterday’s victories in no way portend how next year’s midterms will go.
How can I say such a thing? Because last year, the GOP was riding very high on a wave of sweeping and surprising victories, and just days ago, the troll farms were ramping up for a crushing flood of condescending one-year anniversary celebrations yesterday, but they were silenced rather humiliatingly in a single day. Politics can do that.
Remember that the Russian interference story broke before last year’s presidential election. It was followed up almost immediately by the Access Hollywood scandal story, which entirely overshadowed the Russia story, and almost immediately after the pussy-grabbing story broke, the Podesta e-mail story broke. In one day, the Russian hacking story broke and disappeared, and wouldn’t see the light of day again until well after trump had stolen the election.
Politics is a fickle business with an incredibly short memory, and the masterminds making up the rules have more contingency plans than you or I can imagine.
The GOP is not going to forget the DNC debacle, and I can guarantee you it is going to come up in 2018, and if the DNC and the democratic electorate pretend that we can simply move on and never discuss this and never figure out how to stop acting like right-wing kleptocrats when it comes to our own nomination process, then it is going to come back to haunt us in a way that is going to catch a lot of us by surprise.
Just ask Alex Pettyfer, if you can find him.