The 2010 Election Was Friday Night At The Movies

I keep hearing this line from the media and the President, Democrats and Republicans. It goes something like this:

"The American people spoke out loud and clear that they wish us, Democrat and Republican, to reach across the aisle and work together to solve the nation's problems."

It's become so pro forma that even though I'm not intending to quote anyone word for word I'd bet you could find that exact phrase spoken by at least one of each party somewhere word for word. It's like a script. And...it sounds fake. It sounds bland and it sounds like a conclusion that elected officials, especially with "D" by their name, came to well before the actual voting took place. But here's the thing. They're all wrong!

As long as I can remember, I have consistently heard the same question every election cycle. "This is it? This is our choice?" In fact you hear it as much as you hear "Would you like fries with that?".

A quick Google around the net shows that voting among most groups was down, but especially in the younger voters demographics. I propose that the reason for this is simple. Much like a Friday night where nothing playing at the local cinema appeals, they stayed home. Why would you go stand in line, pay for a ticket and overpriced popcorn just to see a movie you weren't very interested in to begin with? The same thing applies to elections.

In Texas, our two choices for Governor this year was one rich white guy and one rich white guy. Neither were distinguishable from the other except rich white guy wants us to secede and rich white guy didn't. In the Congressional elections we had group of conservatives who want to gut government verses group of moderates who want to allow conservatives to gut government. I mean, that's what we saw every day. Capitulate, capitulate, capitulate with a dash of capitulate.

The reason none of them appealed wasn't just the color of the candidates' skin or their sex (see how much Michael Steele and Sarah Palin helped the GOP win the Presidency huh?). It was because there was no choice for liberals. All we saw was a party who wanted to throw people out in the cold and a party that appeared to want to hand you a blanket as you were being kicked out.

So it begs the question, if you capitulated to your opponents again and again and again and again, and you lost your majority in the House, why would you keep capitulating after the election?

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