Trump, though, is sort of an extreme case. Roy Moore lost. Barely, but he lost. Alabama actually elected someone other than the Republican nominee. Why? The Republican was a child rapist. Ferris Bueller was wrong. You can go too far, and sometimes, you can get busted by an unexpected person. (Do not repeat that name in a monotone voice in my presence. People have been doing that to me for 32 years, and I'm fucking sick of it.) Sometimes, we see hints of sanity in the electorate.
Yesterday, Don Blankenship lost in his bid for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat in West Virginia. He is a convicted criminal, a racist, and sounds like he's doing an impression of Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. And yet somehow, he lost.
I know, right?
Dennis Kucinich was running for the Democratic nomination for Governor here in Ohio. Kucinich isn't a racist, but he is a twit. In technical, political science terms, he is a "moonbat." We distinguish between "wingnuts" and "moonbats" as follows. A wingnut is a right-wing wacko, and a moonbat is a left-wing wacko. Hence, Kucinich the moonbat. As a demonstration of measurement error within my system in "Going Off the Rails On A Crazy Train," Dennis Kucinich was a member of the House of Representatives at the time, and he did make my "batshit list," but he only had one epithet. He should have had more. He is... not smart. When Dennis Kucinich ran for president in 2004, his "reason" was as follows: "I'm running for president of the United States to enable the goddess of peace to encircle within her reach all of the children of this country and all of the children of the world." No further comment necessary.
Rob Cordray beat Kucinich yesterday. Granted, the Democratic Party doesn't have as much of a pattern of nominating its nitwits as the GOP, but look! They nominated the sane guy!
Oh, and that redistricting thing here that I actually... [gulp] like... [gasp]? It passed.
Shoots of sanity. Perhaps I shouldn't say, "shoots," about the day that Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal. English is funny that way. Regardless, yesterday was not the worst day in the history of democracy.
Limbo, limbo, lim-BO! Nope, got over it that time.
And I suppose that's my point. Blankenship losing, Kucinich losing-- these are very low bars, but they are, at this point in American democracy, notable bars.
Yay, us.