Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Coffee break’s over — Back on your heads

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Mike Peterson Published: November 7, 2012 1 minute 4 comments

I think this Clay Bennett panel pretty much sums it up. It's got enough detail in it that I assume he did two cartoons ahead of time and posted the appropriate one when the call was made.

And I suppose the alternative take might have used most of the same art, but with the facial expressions reversed. I hope that wasn't the case, however, because it wouldn't have been as effective a piece.

Bennett's cartoon speaks not so much to the results we're likely to see as to the defeat of the Koch Brothers/SuperPAC/Montgomery Burns style campaign effort. The legislative impact of a Romney/Ryan win, and its overall impact on things like the make up of the Supreme Court, were important issues but, IMNSHO, a separate concern not addressed here.

Michael Cavna has posted this with some other overnighters at his WashPost blog. While I actually saw this on Facebook, I did look over his selection and would have grabbed this one anyway. The others were either milquetoast or triumphalist and, as to the latter, I don't feel that "triumphant" is a very sensible reaction to the results. 

For one thing, much as the pundits tried to keep everyone tuned in until the last minute, there wasn't a whole lot of suspense for anyone who had actually been paying attention, as Randall Munroe points out in today's xkcd:

I was watching the results come in with a screen shot of Nate Silver's predictions up in Photoshop so that, as each state was called, I could drop a green dot on the ones he got right and a yellow dot on the ones he got wrong.

No yellow phosphors were injured in the updating of this map:

I guess you can tell when I wrapped it up and went to bed by the unmarked states, but the point is that Silver got each one correct up to that point and, as of this writing, he remains perfect with only Florida still in play. He had that one leaning Obama, and, if it goes Romney in the end, I'd still call the night a pretty good justification of his analytical skills.

So the Prez won, and I'm happy with that. As I've said many times in the past four years, the difference between Obama and Bobby Kennedy is that Bobby was prevented from having to live up to the idealistic, unrealistic expectations of his supporters.

I didn't expect Bobby to end the war in Vietnam immediately upon his inauguration, nor did I expect Obama to fix the economy that quickly. To quote Wanda Sykes, "He went to Harvard, not Hogwarts."

More to the point, I'll cite the lesson cagey old Sam Rayburn famously taught young Lyndon Johnson: "If you want to get along, you have to go along." 

We learned about log-rolling and back-scratching in eighth grade social studies back when LBJ was still vice-president. I'm sorry if it came as news to anyone in the past four years.

This is not to say that I have left all naive dreams behind. I'd love to see a third party emerge, and, while I am not enough of a mooncalf to think it's going to be made up of organic, sustainable people in Birkenstocks, I could picture this scenario:

Stunned Republican moderates leave that party and make common cause with conservative Democrats. They could name their new party "The Spector Party" in honor of the late senator from Pennsylvania. Olympia Snowe, Judd Gregg and other refugees from the Tea Party takeover of the GOP would form a centrist, pragmatic party in concert with the sorts of Democrats who, for instance, are against abortion but recognize the need for a policy of choice.

This would leave the Republican Party to wither away in the hands of right-wing screwballs, though that wouldn't happen overnight. But they would become a minority party with limited influence.

And it would leave the Democratic Party open to more progressive viewpoints and able to actually carry out more of its high-flown rhetoric. Maybe Bernie Sanders would find it hospitable enough to join; he'd certainly be more comfortable caucusing with them.

However, I recognize that this scenario is as unrealistic as expecting Mitch McConnell to say, "Okay, we tried obstruction and spent four years putting our own party interests ahead of those of the nation, and it didn't work. Now, with Obama ineligible for another term, we'll start piling up political capital with the electorate by getting to work helping to put this country back on its feet."

Heh. The screwballs are already on top of that potential threat.

And here's what McConnell actually did say, which boils down to "Okay, you won. So now let's do things our way!"

So what did last night mean?

Perhaps you've heard this one: A fellow dies and finds himself in Hell. The devil says to him, "Here's how it works down here: There are a number of rooms where people are undergoing eternal torment, and you have to choose one. You can look into them and see what's going on, but, once you make a choice and close the door behind yourself, that's it. There's no going back."

So they walk down this hallway and the fellow opens a door to see a bunch of people standing on their heads on bare concrete, and obviously in pain. "That doesn't look too good," he says.

And the next room he looks into is full of people standing on their heads on rocks. "Ouch! No!" he says.

But then he opens a door and is hit with a massive stink of shit, and sees a crowd of people standing around up to their knees in the stuff, drinking coffee and talking, and he says to himself, "You know, I'll bet you get used to the smell after awhile. This isn't so bad." 

So he goes into the room and, just as the door clicks shut behind him, there is an announcement on the PA system.

(Scroll back up and read the headline)