Let me be clear: It is delusional to claim dems lost because they didn't stand with the President

[Savannahmann]

85. Forgive the analogy.

In street racing, a vast majority of the people choose to go with flashy cars, loud engines and the rest. In other words, obviously speedy cars. There is another smaller genre though. They are called sleepers. These cars don't look fast, are painted to look as common and normal as possible. Everything that makes them fast is hidden away, where you can't see it. It's a surprise then to have a powerful Ford Mustang, and get blown away by a Buick Rivera. Sleepers come in all shapes and sizes, but the one thing that makes them the same is that they don't look fast, and they don't sound powerful.

I mentioned above that for a guy obsessed with speedy cars, it's a big shock to get beaten by one of those sleepers. It doesn't look fast, and it doesn't seem especially dangerous. That is the analogy I'm talking about in the title. Democrats expected the Republicans to do all the work for them, they expected the Republicans to lose and give the win to the Dems by default.

We expected outrage over the Texas Abortion law to win the election for us. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024828366

We said that people would be thrilled with the rapid response of the militarized police and how it showed the Government was on the job. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022742634

Outrage over Citizens United would drive the people to the polls. Outrage over Sandy Hook would doom the Republican Party. Come on Cali, how many times have you seen threads just like that on this board? How many times have we heard the pundits say it on the news? The Government shutdown. The Republicans were deeply unpopular. You and I both tried to warn people here, and we were pretty much universally ignored, belittled, accused of spreading FUD. Tinfoil hat smiles, hair on fire smiles, I've seen it all, and so have you.

So the Democrats rolled to the start line in one of those flashy brightly colored cars with a big motor and loud exhaust pipes. The Republicans rolled to the line in a beige Buick. The lights turned green, and the race was on, and the Buick went to the lead, and just stayed there. The Democrats didn't take the race seriously until it was too late. It was a week or two before the election when everyone looked around, saw the polls, and decided that they were all wrong. Well, they were wrong, but in favor of the Republicans, it was an even worse blowout than many of us feared.

Now, the owner of the flashy car with the loud engine wants to claim that the Buick cheated. He used Nitrous Oxide. He jumped the light. He's using special tires. All of this to cover up the fact that the flashy car didn't take the race serious having dismissed the car without even really considering the possibilities that are hidden below the surface. One party went into this assuming that the Republicans would be obliging and commit suicide. Despite how smart the Republicans have been playing the game for the last two years, many on our side continue to underestimate the determination of our opponents. We talked about Texas, and how the Republicans were really smart in setting up the law to look reasonable. We talked about Sandy Hook and the Gun Control debate many times.

What we saw was two parties. One taking it very seriously, and offering advice based upon focus groups and polling on how to win. The other just going along assuming that the car they were racing was really slow and would just lose.

The reason a Sleeper works is that people underestimate how fast it really is. The reason the Republicans won is because the Democrats underestimated them, believing them to actually be the ignorant idiotic mouth breathing morons that we portray them to be. Well, we have a choice. We can learn, or we can pretend. If we learn, we have a good chance in 2016. If we decide that it was all racism, then we will be doomed again in two years to have this very same discussion.

The Republicans are smart. They are playing to their strengths, and we ignored them. We assumed it was only a matter of time before they did another Real Rape or something else stupid. Instead it was our side making the stupid comments.

So where do we go from here? Do we start to respect our opponents, and learn that the Republicans want to win, and are going to try to win? Or do we just sit back and wait for them to do something stupid so we don't have to work for it? While I hope we go with the former, I am seeing the signs we are going with the latter. We're going to sit on our asses and just obstruct, obstruct, and obstruct some more. This way, we can lose even bigger in 2016 because the Democratic brand will be so damaged we would lose to Tickle me Elmo.