Pun Salad

Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be amused at this:

Trump could also throw Democrats an olive branch by supporting a longstanding progressive priority: the elimination of the filibuster.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) November 6, 2024

I wonder if anyone's asked Senator Wyden if he plans to push this "overhaul" now. I'd love to see a video of his answer.

Also of note:

• We won't gloat, but … we'll link to the NHJournal, which kinda does: NH Dems Lost The Old-Fashioned Way. They Earned It.

  The depth of the Democrats’ disaster is still unfolding. The best estimates are a 16-8 GOP state Senate and more than 220 Republicans in the House. Coös County, once a blue bastion of Bernie voters, is now Democrat-free.

  But the biggest blow was the blowout victory of Kelly Ayotte over Joyce Craig.

  Ayotte deserves credit for the aggressive and disciplined campaign she ran. In the final weeks of the gubernatorial primary, when it was clear that former state Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem) was destined for defeat, she kept up the attack ads. Other candidates may have been tempted to hoard their cash, take their foot off the gas. She didn’t.

  Instead, Ayotte sent the message that she didn’t like losing in 2016 and she was going to do whatever it took — and then some — to make sure it didn’t happen again.

  Fun fact: the only person I voted for who won yesterday is our state's next governor, Kelly Ayotte. (Further fun fact: she got more votes than any other Republican in my little, heavily Democrat-leaning, town.)

  Also, allow me once again to once again show my age: NHJournal recycles the tag line uttered by John Houseman in TV advertising for the investment company Smith Barney, running from (wow) the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. (Details and a couple videos here.)

  Now, sadly, Mr. Houseman is dead, and so is Smith Barney.

• We won't gripe much, either, but… we will link to Abigail Anthony, who (in turn) links to a whole bunch of gripers: The Best Worst Election Takes. She roamed the fringes of Twitter, picking the most overwrought. Sample:

  • “This is unironically worse than 9/11.”
  • “This is not Kamala’s fault btw. She worked her ass off to a beautiful campaign with the ~100 days she had. She’s arguably the most qualified US presidential candidate ever, with prior experience in all 3 branches of government. Americans simply voted against their best interest.”
  • “There will be some people that try to say this election was about trans people, but I think that misses something much deeper. We are in a country that craves fascism, that is tired of a Washington that does nothing, and is willing to follow whoever Trump blames.”
  • “At this point it’s abundantly clear that it was never really ‘But, her emails’ it was ‘But, they’re females.’”
  • “Toxic masculinity won last night.”

  If you want to wallow in schadenfreude, and who doesn't, Abigail's your go-to girl.

• More specifically, she admitted she was bullshitting. At the Federalist, Brianna Lyman keeps up the opposition research, even after the election: Kamala Harris Admits Everything She Said About Trump Was A Lie. Specifically, in her concession speech last night.

  “To the young people that are watching, it is okay to feel sad and disappointed,” Harris said. “But please know it’s going to be okay.”

  It’s going to be okay?

  How can it be okay when Harris told us that her opponent is a fascist? She said a Trump victory would be “dangerous” and a “huge risk for America.” Harris claimed that Trump “wants to send the military after American citizens” and that “he is out for unchecked power.” She painted him as an existential threat to “democracy” itself.

  To be fair, much of what Trump (et al.) said about Kamala was also bullshit. Flight 93 rhetoric was flying by pretty thick from both sides.

• Fortunately, a sober look from… George F. Will, of course: Republican self-degradation continues. Democratic self-sabotage helped. I hope you can RTWT, but here's an excerpt:

  Enough has been said about the Republican Party’s eight years of self-degradation. More needs to be said about the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president. And then, via Democratic Party high-handedness, foisted her on the nation as the party’s nominee. She did not pass through the toughening furnace of competition that reveals mettle, or its absence.

  Her campaign, although short, was too long for her talents. They do not include the skill of making her synthetic centrism — her repudiation of her entire public profile prior to July — seem authentic.

  A wit once asked, can the phrase “insipid beyond words” be applied to words? Harris segued from vapidity (“joy!”) to hysteria (“fascism!”), from Beethoven (“Ode to Joy,” without the music) to Wagner (“Götterdämmerung,” staged for swing states). She mocked Trump for being such a feeble president that he could not even build his border wall. Simultaneously, she intimated that in a second term the triumph of his Hitlerian will would steamroller America’s democratic institutions. Perhaps voters detected a contradiction.

  If "democracy" means that "the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard", fine. But we don't deserve George F. Will, and we're blessed to have him.

• Why Kamala really lost. National Review's perennially dyspeptic movie reviewer, Armond White, takes on an American idol: Julia Roberts Kamala Harris Ad Promotes Movie Star's Anti-American Revolt.

  Actress Julia Roberts has clarified the class war. Negative response to her ad endorsing Kamala Harris has been greater than the reaction to any of her largely ignored recent movies, including the odious Obama production Leave the World Behind.

  Call it “Your Turn, Honey,” which is the opening line of the 40-second political spot in which Roberts narrates the story of a wife not divulging her presidential-election vote to her husband. It contrasts with 57-year-old Roberts’s rom-com filmography (Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, Conspiracy Theory), supposedly a career all about trust and fidelity. Whatever following Roberts has secured, the actress can no longer be trusted. The treacherous “Your Turn, Honey” plants seeds of mistrust, enmity, and home-wrecking marital division.

  That wouldn’t be news in a Michael Haneke or Paul Verhoeven Eurotrash satire, but it is shockingly cynical from Roberts, raising suspicion that the Harris campaign’s last-minute slogan, “A New Way Forward,” actually promotes marital faithlessness, betrayal, and nation-wrecking disloyalty.

  I looked at Julia's intelligence-insulting ad last Sunday. I assume that's why (as the New Republic says) White Women Doomed Kamala Harris and the Democrats—Again. You have to make your smirking condescension less obvious, Julia.

• I hope he cools off, but… Jacob Sullum notes danger signs: Trump Has Many Grudges. Now He Has a Chance To Act on Them.

  "If there is an advantage to electing a preening, petty, thin-skinned, whiny, vindictive, vacuous, mendacious, boorish bully" to the White House, I wrote in November 2016, "it may be that he prompts a reconsideration of the absurd hopes and cultish veneration that surround the presidency." I suggested that "a ridiculous president will encourage Americans to take the presidency less seriously."

  That did not quite work out as I hoped. Although Trump was predictably ridiculous as president, the comedy turned to tragedy by the end of his term, when rioters outraged by his stolen-election fantasy stormed the U.S. Capitol, interrupting the congressional ratification of Joe Biden's victory. To this day, Trump insists, against all evidence, that he actually won reelection in 2020. The voters who returned him to office this week either agree with him or think it does not really matter whether the president is dishonest or deluded enough to stick with that preposterous story four years later.

  I looked at my post-election 2016 posts. They held up pretty well, but like Sullum, things did not work out as I hoped. Or feared either, so…