Tweet
For the past eight months President Obama’s job approval rating has been steadily improving while his disapproval numbers have fallen by a similar amount, according to Gallup’s tracking. From Gallup:
The turnaround for Obama’s approval started in mid 2011 and closely mirrors the same turnaround in economic confidence that began in mid 2011. From Gallup:
The economy is not improving rapidly, but as long as the economy is at least steadily improving, I suspect Obama’s job approval will continue to go up. It is still all about “the economy stupid.”
The big question is whether the economy, particularly jobs growth, stalls out in the next few months. For awhile it looked like the economy was heading in the right direction, but a bad jobs report last Friday could be a serious warning sign for the economy and by extension President Obama’s re-election prospects.
54 Comments
Oh, that’s right, the economy is IMPROVING. I guess I forgot. Things are getting better.
uh…what?
The real economy is not improving, and Obama is really not the candidate one should be rooting for, no matter all the cheerleading masquerading as statistical analysis.
I thought that was clear as glass by now…
I could be wrong…
to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The people are manipulated by a corrupt and complicit corporate media as if they were nothing more than marionettes.
I don’t know Jon. The improvement of bo’s ratings are essentially unchanged over the last several months. Granted your trend lines point upward but they with margins of error so I wouldn’t read too much there.
As for the economy, this improvement talk seems more like media/white house driven propaganda. My sense anecdotally including page 3 stories about companies laying off tells me this economy is still in the toilet for most americans.
If Obama’s approval rating is tracking the economy, then I would expect low turnout come November. The fact that even after months of Republican psycho-drama being plastered everywhere in the media circus, Obama is still polling below 50% is also a bad sign for him. Fortunately, the GOP polls even worse!
So maybe the economy isn’t doing all that well, eh? Since both those polls show net-negative perceptions, perhaps that is the real story here.
Anyway, why are we supposed to be pleased that Obama’s polling is showing weak signs of improvement?
So Obama’s “job” approval rating is tied to the jobs available (and necessary) rating? And everything else slides (or is pushed) “off” the “table”?
Well, there is this consideration: The David Dayen post preceding this one of yours, Jon.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/04/09/warm-winter-economic-boost-coming-back-to-haunt-jobs-picture/
So, what will Obama have to “sell” if the “jobs for other people scenario” goes “south”?
Will it be his “signature” health INSURANCE “program”?
Folks might want to take a gander at this before getting all jubilant and hopey …
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_health_care_debate_20120409/.
Any chance at all, Jon, that there might be some “Elections” news or coverage about alternative candidates … you know, just so we might have a wee bit of perspective beyond the failing Republican and Democrat “policies”, some other ideas, some other possibilities, just so that there might be a broader and more informed discussion … some consideration of something beyond the tear-jerking, nail-biting suspense of who will be the next corporate tool?
At a certain point, is it not incumbent (sorry for the use of a political “term”) upon you to acknowledge that there ARE some alternatives to Romney and Obama? If the “feeling” is that these alternative candidates cannot “win”, then perhaps we are in need of a discussion of what “winning” actually means and … who (or “what”), precisely and specifically ,”wins” and who, specifically and precisely, “loses” when there is only a choice between, as Hellen Keller put it about 100 years ago, “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?
When, do you imagine that it might be time to discuss alternatives? Do you propose to wait until those “alternatives” are “viable” or likely to “win”?
If so, then what might be “lost” in the interim? Anything? Nothing? I fully appreciate your “Action” posts, and have told you as much. If the Lame-Stream media are well-covering the Two-Ring Legacy Party circus (as they are), then might it not be wise, or even timely, given this nation’s present “circumstance”, for you to give at least a mention of the fact that there ARE alternatives? If you do not consider or believe that there is any need or purpose to do such a thing, might you at least be willing to share your reasons and considerations for NOT doing so?
In the hope and anticipation of a response, Jon, I thank you, very sincerely, in advance … for the time and the thoughts.
DW
I don’t believe an R or a D are viable when it comes to fixing the broken US economy. Time to try alternatives.
There are no viable alternatives.
Presidents are elected by the Electoral College. No presidential candidate, other than the Democratic and Republican nomineees, will recieve even one Electoral College vote.
So what are you advocating?
Sorry. I forgot the snark tag.
Well, that is the end of it. Right?
We are, are we not, oldgold, agreed that the Electoral College is a detriment to meaningful “democratic representation”, and well beyond its “sell-by” date?
If the Democrats and Republicans are the only ones allowed to “play”, then how, pray tell, is it ever to change?
Frankly, as we both well know, NO meaningful change of our electoral system is possible when ALL such changes must be funneled through the Congress, as even a change to that quaint piece of paper … you know which one I refer to, I’m certain, can take place without the willing consent of Congress and the President ….
What of the consent and will of the governed … need we recall another quaint old piece of paper?
Tell me, what suggestions do you, as an avowed “incrementalist”, offer to our considerations … in this the best of all possumble worlds?
Surely, you are not happy with, nor proud of the comment you have just made? You have uttered it as a sad and unhappy truism, perhaps?
You are an attorney, and presumably acquainted with how the legal profession and the law came into being in this nation, that in fact, this nation and its legal system were established at the same time BY that certain wee quaint piece of paper … and when that wee quaint piece of paper was signed, as well as the “declaration” before it, there was not a single school of law in any of the colonies …
In a real sense, then, the well-being of this republic, based upon somewhat democratic notions, runs a true parallel with the state and the “condition” of the law … so it will not surprise you if I say that we have neither a civil society of democratic meaning … nor a functioning rule of law, I presume?
How do we fix either thing when a lawyer pronounces that “there are no viable alternatives” … for, if it is true about the one, then is it not ever more evidently true of the other?
DW
What suggestions do I offer?
In the near-term, vote for Democratic candidates.
In the mid-term, work to increase your numbers so as to move the Democratic Party leftward.
In the long-term, work to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College.
You’ll excuse me if I disregard your advice and decide not to throw my vote away on GOP-Lite Democrats anymore. If you really want the Democrats to move Left don’t vote for them until they do it. As long as you plan to vote for Obama and the Democrats anyway, they really don’t care what you think. If Obama hasn’t proved that to you yet then I really don’t know what to say.
Are you proud of those suggestions, oldgold, do you not fully realize and anticipate the impossibility of the last if … we accept and apply the first?
I ask you, bluntly, by WHAT means may ANY changes be achieved within a corrupted and and rigidly controlled “system”?
Your answers are of little use unless you very specifically delineate a method to thwart the madness of money and brute power … both of which have, increasingly, free play and the approval of ALL three “branches” of the vilely complicit and conniving “government” which has lost all intrinsic legitimacy, by ignoring the people, the consent of the governed, and operates to the sole benefit, openly and blatantly, of the Masters, as Adam Smith most aptly described them … the would-be RULERS of the coming neofeudalism.
How, for example, do you propose that a Constitutional Amendment, limiting the power of the Legacy Parties might be allowed or permitted to come into being, if we simply continue to elect those who will not benefit from any such change?
What are the means?
What are the methods?
DW
Thx for the link.
Excellent overview of Obama/Romney’s health insurance industry bailout:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_health_care_debate_20120409/.
#2 is the means. Liberals have to increase their numbers. We are not going to run anything with 20% of the electorate.
Starting with your first suggestion, why should I vote for a dem candidate?
Those numbers are useless. Self-identifying “liberals” are just Democrats.
Two-thirds of the American People support Progressive approaches to nearly every major policy issue: taxation, social welfare, war, etc. We ALREADY have the numbers. The American People are with us. What we DON’T have is a political party on our side. The Democrats have abandoned us. Obama and his ilk disdain us. Yet so many intend to vote for Obama again anyway. By doing so, you enable and reward what Obama and the Democrats do as they adopt one Conservative position after another. Look in the mirror, my friend: you are part of the problem.
The “improving economic numbers” were the result of manufactured statistics that were probably achieved through “outsourcing”. Oldgold must be inhabiting an alternate reality where (s)elected representatives work for the people rather than the oligarchs. He’s living the “American Dream”, which doesn’t exist in the conscious world.
mods, can we have edit function work for all post?
edit:
I don’t know Jon. The improvement of bo’s ratings are essentially unchanged over the last several months to me. Granted your trend lines point upward but they are within margins of error so I wouldn’t read too much into this.
As for the economy, this improvement talk seems more like media/white house driven propaganda. My sense anecdotally including page 3 stories about companies laying off tells me this economy is still in the toilet for most americans.
wb wrote: “Two-thirds of the American People support Progressive approaches to nearly every major policy issue: taxation, social welfare, war, etc. We ALREADY have the numbers. The American People are with us. What we DON’T have is a political party on our side. The Democrats have abandoned us. Obama and his ilk disdain us.”
——
That is EXACTLY the problem. The PEOPLE have come around. Oh, we still have a bunch of redneck morons. But a majority of Americans have “smarted up” politically. But, as you say, we got nobody on OUR side. That’s quite a conundrum.
If we already have the numbers, then where are the primary challenges or 3rd party candidates with more than minuscule support?
For two generations, poll after poll has shown Liberals do not have the numbers.
Well said, and the first part is easily confirmed by any honest search for “evidence” of what “the people” already desire and NEED, wbgonne. As to the second part, it is the “opinion shapers”, the false “consensus makers” who are deliberately seeking to frighten and to confuse … who, themselves, have vested interests in the “outcomes” … who shill for the servants of the masters, while claiming it is the height of wisdom and honor to do so.
Any who are familiar with the beginning history of this nation cannot help but note AND underline the parallels at “play”, today.
There were those, then, who counseled that peace and honor where on the side of George III, of Parliament, and the power of English law and force.
We are at a terribly similar divide … and any who suggest otherwise are neither wise nor sharing honest or useful advice, however much they may believe or proclaim to the contrary.
In a sense, THOSE colonial differences were a more honest civil divide among the people, the majority siding with the right to rule themselves, than the later Civil War, which was far less about the “peculiar institution” than about economic control … which clearly, and just as brutally attends this confrontation. For confrontation it is; the hard truth as against the pernicious myth and institutional lies…
These are the times that try humankind’s souls … and, daily, we each reveal the substance of our philosophy and the essence of our humanity.
The die is cast … the future either belongs to justice and the people … or to brutality and the oppressors … of the “middle ground”, of the “centrist’s place” … there is none … there is no honest neutrality, as Howard Zinn might say, there is only choice and dedicated action. I hope that understanding may and shall embrace a non-violent course, but there is no turning back …
We did not choose, nor desire, to start or prosecute a class war … others, seeking wealth and power, made that dreadful and fateful choice.
Will we rise to a new renaissance … or shall we see life become nasty, brutish, and short?
A new enlightenment or a continuing Dark Age?
To pretend that humanity faces ANY other choices, is either foolish or calculated …
DW
You appear to be making the entirely too common mistake of confusing the economic conditions in your neck of the woods with the country as a whole. The recovery is here, but like the future, it’s not very evenly distributed. A number of coastal (incl Great Lakes) cities, are seeing their economies improving. DC is one of those cities, which explains why all the Beltway bandits see the economy as improving. That’s what they see out their window.
What you see out yours is bleaker, but you are making the same fundamental error.
I already answered that. Self-identifying as a “liberal” is limited to hardcore Democrats bc the GOP has done a masterful job — abetted by the Democrats — of demonizing liberalism. Look at the major issue polling: that tells you where the American People are. The American People are decidedly Progressive and the U.S. is a Left of Center nation: it has been since 1930 and it still is, notwithstanding the massive and bi-partisan propaganda to the contrary.
Look in the mirror. I don’t intend to be harsh but you answer your own questions. But there is another way: I am voting for Jill Stein and the Greens in 2012. I believe many other people will do so. Get on board and be part of the solution. If you want the Democrats and Obama to move Left, withhold the only thing of value you have: your vote.
I am coming to believe that events will outpace our development. Being so powerful for so long, Americans suffer from grave hubris. I expect we will get taught before we actually learn that our fantasies are irrelevant to reality. Put it this way: global warming doesn’t give a shit whether we believe in it or not.
Are you inclined to look at graphic descriptions, PierceNichols?
Check these out, if you’ve the time.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
and these
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts
Things are NOT improving in ANY way meaningfully consistent with the genuine needs and reality of actual people, rather than an elite few, whatever windows those actual people may be looking at or through …
DW
Totally agree, wbgonne. Our sentient consciousness might avail us of understanding, if we choose to make use of it … whether it will be sufficient … time and time, alone, shall tell and the earth’s reality will dictate that nature and quality of human lives …
If we don’t “live” to, if we are too cowardly to understand those truths, the second, most especially, then our children certainly shall … and if humanity might, somehow survive, and I hope thrive, it will not hold us in the kindest of thoughts … and regards.
And, before all hell breaks loose, environmentally, the rest of the world’s people may have to stop us in our evil ways ….
THAT is not beyond decent and reasonable justice ….
DW
Of course things are improving in D.C., that’s the hub of corruption and lobbyist payoffs. There’s nothing wrong with my logic and the fundamental error is your belief in corporate/government propaganda. Rationalize all you want, it doesn’t change the facts that you choose to ignore. The system is broken, and our (s)elected representatives have done nothing to cutail corporate control.
The corporate controlled MSM doesn’t allow for national exposure of third party candidates. They determine the coverage and ultimately present us with a choice between two previously approved puppets. Wake up.
That’s enabling, rewarding, shielding, and defending. Part and parcel of the weakfished and spineless centrist failsauce that has us mired within the current morass the last 30 or 40 years or more because it explicitly champions complacency and complicity with that morass, and thus artificially extending it generation after generation as if one time-shifts a program on their TIVO.
That’s unlikely because — despite America trafficking in stupid — there’s still enough smart motherfuckers around to smell the bullshit long before their bullshit detector does. And they’ve came to the same conclusion as I have: the DNC has a crystal clear vested interest in deliberately calibrating and co-coordinating razor thin majorities via mastering the art of Passive-Aggressiveness and Learned Helplessness so that voters will never — EVER — vote for them in large sweeping numbers again no matter how many weapons of mass distraction they deploy to menace society with.
If such a thing were to happen, they know they could never euchre themselves with the right and left bowers — the “B-b-but the Republicans” card and the “Hold Your Nose And Vote” card — they’ve been using to filch undue and unwarranted sympathy that accords them with re-election/stays of execution. Quite the opposite: the voters are more likely to drag them out of their cushy offices by the bottom lip, drag them out in public, and proceed to Nick Berg their sorry heads off using a hatchet made by NERF or as dull as Bill O’ Rielly fucking wits. I know I would be first in line with my Ronco cutlery set — IT’S SHOWTIME, ASSHOLES!
Now, that’s hilarious. Personally, we need a new Constitution steeped with the same spirit as our current quaint piece of Charmin with much of the same checks and balances, but with new automatic triggers and fail-safes. Why? Well, you know how the Shay’s Rebellion exposed the warts in the original Confederacy?!? The Occupy Rebellion/American Spring has exposed the warts in today’s Corportocracy, resulting in exactly the same America Daniel Shays came home to: joblessness, foreclosure, privatized debtor’s prisons owned by the same bankers that did the foreclosures.
In short, the original Constitution — steeped in personal property rights in the wake of the Shay’s Rebellion — has been rendered moot and exposed as a failure. Because here we are a few centuries of beta testing later, and the same exact thing happened that it tried to prevent: the tyranny of the propertied class.
Hence the ironic reason I’m laughing: I’m more likely to see the elites eliminate our right to vote under the centrist “for your own good” false rubric before they’ll ever let the great unwashed rabble do away with their precious Electoral College. In fact, the only way we’re gonna get rid of the Electoral College is through a repeat of the Shay’s Rebellion, and the aforementioned new Democracy 1.1 kernel purges it post reboot …
You folks do the outrage well. As far as offering reality based and viable solutions, not so much.
We do, outrage well. That said, you haven’t answered my question. Why should I vote for a dem, your first proposition. That in fact may be the question the dems have to answer to a populace that have seen 3 to 5 years of majority dem rule!
Vote for Jill Stein and the Greens in 2012. If the Democrats CAN be moved Left, then Progressives withholding votes and demanding Progressive policies will force the Democratic Party Left. That is progress. That is the beginning of a solution. So do it or don’t but please don’t say people here are not offering solutions. We are offering a solution: Vote Green. It may not be the solution you want, but that’s another matter. Indeed, it is the fatalists, the lesser-of-two-evilists who offer no hope: just handwringing, despair, hopelessness and helplessness.
So we do not lose all of the progress that has been hard-earned over the past 8 decades.
But under dem rule:
Social Security and Medicare are threatened
Banking was deregulate (Clinton)
Nuclear Power is restarted
Americans can now be indefinitely detained and killed without due process
Poverty is increasing
Money was poured into Wall Street while the 99% get screwed
Sure FDR did great things but todays dems are a far cry from this. They are just about the equivalent of Nixon if not slightly right of him.
It is not outrage, merely the truth, and yes, we do it enunciate it well, and clearly, oldgold.
You, on the other hand, do not even do your prevarication and tired, empty nostrums well. You are most reminiscent of a Minister of the Crown extolling the colonial patriots to knuckle under, bow down, and thank their lucky stars to have been English born and bred. Perhaps we might consider your proclamations the Oldgold Acts … for like the Townsend Acts they argue for increasing encroachment by tyranny, without meaningful representation, and its frightened embrace … for, you claim, … “there are no viable alternatives” … you shall be quite amazed and no doubt surprised when reason and understanding are well-met and “the people” rise to claim what is rightfully their own.
That is their lives and the inalienable right to determine their own individual, joined, and common destiny, as free beings, as the representatives of their own true interests, needs and livelihoods.
We are here met in common, worthy cause, and you are present among us only to deflect and defeat, to cajole and condemn, to praise our current Caesars and lament that there is naught that may be done, except to worship more of the same. Were you a duck … you would be well-considered to be, as are the Congress and the Obama presidency … lame.
If that is non too gentle a description and depiction, then consider that you have done your very utmost best, oldgold, to protect us, as you consider, from ourselves and from what you imply is our excess and unbecoming concerns and unworthy weariness with a “game” you, most clearly, love and find only the most meager of faults with …
For you, four more years of Obama is a victory, a triumph, something to celebrate, while for the nation and for our common civil society it is a grim and bitter fate … that shall further impoverish us, will lead to further wars, and fail utterly and miserably to rise to the challenges of our time, not least of which is the crisis of global climate change and the heart-breaking plight of “common” folk
You do NOT offer ANY reasons of merit to vote for Obama, or any other Democrat, no soaring moral affirmations, nor even any civil decencies … you merely intone that the dems are the best … and if they ARE indeed the “best” oldgold, the best that YOU see of the moment and the best you may imagine, then you had best examine the quality of your measure … for it amounts to little but obeisance to bloody greed and unchecked bloody power.
DW
Whereas you personify the definition of insanity: same actions over and over, waiting for a different outcome.
psalango @36
Let the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and see what happens.
Still failing to recognize the fact that the duopoly consists of the Corporatist Party and that they engage in Kabuki Theater.
I recognize no one pays any attention to my comments, but you might consider what Noam Chomsky had to say on this topic.
It may be to your benefit to heed the words of George Carlin when the government and elections are the subject. Chomsky is wrong, the “lesser of two evils is still evil and there is no “Democratic” outrage or blow back when the Puppet-in-Chief is a “D”.
Isn’t that what we have anyway with this uniparty government!
Look, the other side of the scary republican coin is the go along dems who would normally be outraged and work against bad policies. Because of Obama, mum’s the word. Even worse, some are advocating bad policies that are republican in nature.
psalongo @39
No.
I didn’t think you were advocating for that either.
For what it’s worth.
I admire that you stand up for what you believe. Isn’t that what so many people are asking us to do? But, if you don’t stand exactly for what They believe, you get yelled at. As if that’s going to change your well considered beliefs.
Thank you.
Chomsky, oldgold, as you may or may not know, IS voting for and supporting Jill Stein … and he has made that very clear. So, by all means, salve your conscience with his gentle, if not encouraging, words, even if you dare not follow his honest example in action.
Chomsky is doing what he considers appropriate for him to do, for the VERY same and precise reason that many of us are so doing, which is to broaden the discussion, provide the understanding of other opportunities, AND to put clear and irrefutible pressure upon your not so “good” dems … that their “lesser” (and that “lesser-ness” remains a matter of very questionable and dangerous “degree”) evil might be challenged and made both evident and obvious, in its intent and its implications.
Are you unaware of Chomsky’s full position or simply willing to leave it as only half revealed?
Frankly, most of us made clear our positions long before Noam Chomsky made clear his, and it is somewhat sad that you are so little convinced of the moral rectitude of your position, that you must needs find some approbation in the words of Noam Chomsky as he reassures the merely confused that voting for evil does not, of itself, make one evil … (yet it most certainly confirms the evil in its evil ways … regardless of what Chomsky might say or intend to convey, to those simply contemplating voting for what they themselves may well regard as “evil”, greater or lesser, in my opinion, and, to even couch in “lesser evil” terms ought to give some at least a moment of pause and consideration).
DW
No one is yelling at anyone, demi, at least that I may see.
I am merely suggesting that belief, whether religious or political does deserve hard questions and while I respect oldgold’s right to hold whatever convictions he may wish, I also hold the right of the rest of us to seek to change this corrupt system, to seek to create and encourage something better.
My references to the colonial period are both proper and just.
As I said, one cannot profess neutrality, which to his credit, oldgold does not, but to suggest that any disagreement is assault or attack or “yelling” is neither honest nor appropriate … as it too signals a “judgement” which is neither just and nor appropriate howevver ostensibly intended to balance … or else is a suggestion that comity is a one-way street, that all reason and proper temperate behavior is on the one side and not the other.
In the days ahead, let us all see if civility holds sway?
It would be less than honest to suggest that some of these differences of opinion, which our time and shared plight place upon all of us, may well strain friendships and relationships … that is the nature of what we ALL face. I agree with your position, as I perceive it, that reason and respect should obtain AND survive … but part of that scenario requires a willingness to offer meaningful responses and not simply appeals to fear, to un-reason, or to unexamined alliances and beliefs.
I hope that you may take my words in the spirit in which they are meant, demi, as we are at a very serious crux point, a “crossroads of necessary choice”, and all of us must make our best efforts at reason, tolerance, and understanding … and expect and tolerate nothing less from everyone else who wishes to engage in civil and constructive discussion. It is not just OUR future, we old ones, it is our children’s and their children’s (for your children will hope to have children, demi, as do mine) future, their world and their time … and it falls to us, NOW, to act with a full and thorough understanding of that truth … for it is the truth …
Regardless of what we say here, hard, hard times are coming, there shall be pain, suffering, and death … and, since that WILL be so, then let us
make the most “worth” and “while” of these months, days, and hours which are ours, to envision and to honestly and courageously strive for the very best of what is possible … let us not settle for something “less” … what do you say?
DW
Chomsky said, ” If you live in a swing state………”
Chomsky is a resident of Massachusetts. It is not a swing state. As such, a symbolic vote makes sense.
You may regard it as “symbolic”, as may Chomsky, oldgold, I regard it as necessary … and I imagine that you will be as gracious as Chomsky and permit, without interminable harangue, the rest of us to vote our conscience … whatever the outcome?
So, you do know the whole of Chomsky’s position?
I gather you have not yet grasped the whole of what the rest of us intend?
And, allow me one more and further “caution” to you and your “ilk”; if Obama should lose, then any assault upon those of us who could not vote, in good conscience, for him … is NOT license to attack us as many have sought to do to those who voted for Nader. SCOTUS decided that election, contrary to law AND the Constitution … as you should well know, it came down to a flawed POLITICAL “decision” about the vote count in Florida … and nothing else.
However, if Obama should “win”, then you and your “ilk” may expect and I hope, accept, full blame for whatever destruction Obama might bring upon all of us … without anyone having to remind you.
Have we a deal, oldgold?
THAT will be the “measure” of YOUR choice …
DW
Yeah, well, they don’t always count swing state votes…oh maybe halvsies…oh no we’ll give ‘em all to the guy not on the ballot. Nasty business. Taxation without representation.
No. We do not have a deal.
But, thank you for providing me with a good horse laugh. “Interminable harangue,” now, that is comedic gold.
Then, oldgold, poor, dear demi shall have to defend you time and again …
And, if your man wins, then I shall remind you of your full-on and fulsome culpability for the disasters he shall press, mercilessly and carelessly, upon us.
Fair being nothing if not fair …
And your hoarse, horse laugh may well not be the last laugh heard.
And yes, yours are among the most interminable, mindless, and insufferable of harangues … the “image” well “fits” you, and your golden oldies … ’tis, nonetheless, always a pleasure to encounter your staid, predictably incremental maundering … oldgold, and the place truly would be the duller and less civil without ye.
;~DW
I’d be hesitant to blame any voter for the winning candidate’s actions: there’s no proof that votes actually cast are votes actually counted….is there? I might blame the money contributers to said candidate, if that’s made public, that is.