Rarely does a quote jump out and frame a story as succinctly and powerfully as this one, from this morning's New York Times:
"I'm hoping that it gives a message to the country," said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. "I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it's a message of 'that's enough.' Let's stop the giveaways and let's get jobs going."
Really, Marlene? You're a lifelong Democrat? The kind of lifelong Democrat who thinks stem-cell research snuffs out babies, opposes marital rights for homosexual couples, pimps tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy individuals, heartily endorses waterboarding and other methods of torture, opposes all clean energy initiatives, and believes our health care system is hunky dory? Because that's the kind of lifelong Republican Scott Brown is.
So congratulations, Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover. Way to honor your values. But then again, you got yours, right? You're on Medicare. And, of course, as a citizen of Massachussetts, your children and grandchildren are less likely than, say, my daughter to be turned away at the doctor's office because they don't have insurance. So by all means, send your "message," and don't worry about the real world consequences. The Bush era wasn't all that bad.
That was my kneejerk response. Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover and any "lifelong Democrat" as overmedicated as Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, can get good and bent. We don't need them.
But we do.
Everyone has their own ideas about what happened yesterday and on certain points some people differ. But I hope everyone agrees that there is no new lesson to be learned here. We have not learned from our same old mistakes. We are being whipped for our same old hubris, and for overestimating the electorate.
A year ago today, I listened to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews musing about how great it was to have a president in Barack Obama who didn't talk down to the American people. Who acknowledged and even loved to talk at great length about the complexities endemic to our nation's many problems. America, their intoxicated prattle supposed, was in the throes of a wonk revival. Barack Obama was going to dig in and do the calculus and solve our nation's problems and blind us with science.
I remember nodding my head. And I'm a fucking idiot.
We need to get over the notion that people appreciate complexity. Turn on your TV and the word you will here most often during the commercial breaks is what?
EASY.
Nobody gives a rat's ass how you make your sausage. They want to know what it tastes like and where they can find it. Why? Because they're hungry, and they're in a fucking hurry.
So here's my synthesis: Our party, our Congress, and our president are formulating policy and crafting message for thinkers -- who for all intents and purposes may as well not exist.
The thinker will not butter our bread. Half our populace, and by extension half our electorate, is possessing of below average intelligence. Democrats could charm the pants off every single voter of above average intelligence and we'd still need one simpleton -- one Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover -- to put us over the top.
If we cannot communicate clearly, simply, and in a compelling way to simpletons, rubes, morons, boneheads, clods, hammerheads, dimwits, and failures, we will not sustain a majority and we will not realize a better future. We will fail. Because Republicans know how to communicate to simpletons, and they certainly know how to communicate to failures. They understand what a white male failure wants to hear, which is that he is not responsible for his own misery.
I am not suggesting that Democratic policy initiatives in the last year have been 100% win. Progressives have many legitimate quarrels. But as we face the very real possibility of a backslide into an alternative we consider almost unthinkable, we must ask ourselves why so many voters don't see it that way.
Or we're fucked.