Allen West Concedes to Patrick Murphy

[calimary]

46. Very glad to see this! I hope it's a new beginning! For our side as well:

I'm hoping that 2010 is a lesson for all us Dems, progressives, liberals and other good guys. Even in the midterms - WE HAVE TO GET OUT THE VOTE!!! You want more of these assholes in power? More versions of allen west and joe walsh (the bad joe walsh, not the good singer/guitarist Joe Walsh of The James Gang and the Eagles!)? More of a chance for THEM to gain prominence, news coverage, lead-story attention, and donations up the ying-yang from opportunistic infections who think they see a winner? More opportunity for them to gain clout and influence? More opportunity for more of them to metastasize into the culture and overrun it, so THEY get to decide what the agenda is and what the policies are and what the laws are and who the enforcers are and whose interests get ignored and neglected?

Good Grief NO!!!! A vigorous GOTV campaign needs to be waged during the midterm elections as well! Especially since President Obama is going to need more strength at his back than ever! And it might even mean we take back the House in 2014 if we go all in!

And then, please consider this: if we have another great election like this one in 2014, JUST IMAGINE what that will do to the morale of the teabagger world. More of them becoming despondent, opting out, not bothering to vote, viewing their "movement" as so much toilet-filler. And MAYBE - just MAYBE - some of them will decide to open their eyes and open their minds a little more. What if it convinces some of them that they've just been lied to, and used, just one time too many? What if it actually reaches some of those poor souls and rescues them from the Damned? That would actually be really great! After all, even teabaggers will need to wake up, eventually.

What I hope for, longterm, is that the bad guys suffer enough significant electoral defeat, election cycle after election cycle, that some of them start to realize that not only have they been shamelessly used and lied to, but these ideas they're puffed up with just don't fly anymore. MAYBE, just MAYBE, some of them will realize the REAL truth: that they may actually have to join the 21st Century and abandon some of their Bronze Age ideas.

I think that's the real lesson of 2012, a lesson on which most of them on that side of the aisle can't, or WON'T take delivery: that it's not HOW they messaged that failed. It's WHAT they messaged. It's their over-arching message. Their agenda. Their ideas. Their worldview. THAT'S what failed. It certainly failed them - the way it would absolutely fail the rest of us if, Heaven forbid, THEIR agenda was enacted into law and/or carried into office by a new president.

I don't think many of them will recognize this, or learn this lesson, this time. But what if there's a series of elections that reinforce that lesson over the next SEVERAL election cycles? What if some of them finally start realizing that THIS set of ideas is a loser, and they better start developing some better ones. OR, better yet, warming up to the ideas that are WINNERS. Not all souls can be saved, of course. But maybe there are some. Maybe there are more than just some.