After a period of feeling whacked on the head with a 2x4, I'm trying to pull out of this funk (and not the groovy kind of funk) of despair. I'm very dissatisfied with the discussions on the major networks and the general repetition of the same points. I swear I'll scream if I hear one more comment on the exit poll that found voters decided how to vote on "moral values" of the candidates. It supposedly ranked higher than the economy and the war.

I found the following piece a refreshing slap across my face, not something I enjoy but it certainly made me pay attention. From CounterPunch: "Republicans Gain Shattering Victory; Who to Blame This Time?" by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair:

There are many reasons for what is an overwhelming Republican victory across the board. They range from the disastrous choice of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate to delusions about the potency of electronic organizing (that should have been demolished after Howard Dean's implosion last spring), to the fatal deficiencies of Kerry himself.

The strategy of the Democratic Party as formulated by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe amounted to belief in the simple potency of corporate cash, plus hysterical demonization of Bush and Nader, represented at full stretch by Michael Moore, who began the year backing General Wesley Clarke and ended it as a pied piper for Kerry. They came to the Rubicon of November 2 replete with fantasies, about the unknown cell phone vote, the youth vote (which actually remained unchanged from 2000), the galvanizing potential of Bruce Springsteen and Eminem.

Week after week Kerry and his boosters displayed an unmatched deafness to political tone. The haughty elitist from Boston probably lost most of the Midwest forever when he said in the high summer that foreign leaders hoped he would win. The applause of the French in Cannes for Michael Moore's 9/11 was the sound of the cement drying over the corpse of Kerry's chances of carrying the Midwest. Soros's dollars were like flowers on the grave. After the billionairess Portuguese-American Teresa Heinz Kerry said in mid-October that Laura Bush had never held a job it was all over.