John Hinderaker's clean break with political reality is so snowflake-intricate, so crystalline perfect in its construction, that part of me feels bad stomping all over the thing like a drunken brontosaurus with a restless leg syndrome having a panic attack during an earthquake. I mean, it takes serious and sustained, considerable effort to build a Fortress of Denial like this, each brick lovingly collected from the fetid swamps of internet bullshit that he resides in, much like Yoda's Dagobah home (only without all the personable rustic charm) and held in the hefty walls by the mortar of utter cluelessness.
And yet inside this seemingly impervious shell of manufactured nonsense,
the tiniest cracks are beginning to appear...for our brave Hindrocket is facing the first gnawing echoes of doubt that Romney might...might
actually lose. Madness is seeping in the edges of Johnny's vision, things he can't explain, vexatious ideas that he thought were long buried have come bubbling slowly up to the surface like a gigantic fart in a tar pit.
And so, steeling himself like the Neanderthals of old, he stands beneath the open sky, looks up into the face of the heavens, and asks "Why?"
But it now appears that the election will be very close after all, and that Obama might even win it. It will require a few more days to assess the effects (if any) of the parties’ two conventions, but for now it looks as though the Democrats emerged with at least a draw, despite a convention that was in some ways a fiasco. In today’s Rasmussen survey, Obama has regained a two point lead over Romney, 46%-44%. Scott Rasmussen writes:
The president is enjoying a convention bounce that has been evident in the last two nights of tracking data. He led by two just before the Republican convention, so he has already erased the modest bounce Romney received from his party’s celebration in Tampa. Perhaps more significantly, Democratic interest in the campaign has soared. For the first time, those in the president’s party are following the campaign as closely as GOP voters.
So the Democrats’ red meat, over-the-top attacks on Republicans apparently worked at least as well as the Republicans’ more positive, low-key approach.
Do you see now why I feel pangs of guilt about destroying this sweet, sweet marzipan castle of utter derpness? One plows through the spider's web in between those bushes on the front lawn near the mailbox in the dew-kissed morning stumble to check for your junk mail all the time, but the spider built that himself dammit, and you are destroying something real even if it was ephemeral and obnoxious in the grand scheme of things. It was
very real to the spider, at least.
Meanwhile, John has his answer as to why.
On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.
And so the exquisite Castle Derp is now a tomb, replete with catacombs worming through the earth, ready to receive the shattered corpse of the America That Only Exists In John Hinderaker's Head, as it comes home to rest quietly along with the ghosts of empires past. Already the cables and tubes of the Gubment Matrix Machines are snaking their way in, ready to turn the people in John's mind into batteries for the infinite Agent Obamas that will consume us all! Mammon rises! Mammon rises! Give witness and despair!
Or, you know, a much easier explanation that Romney is losing other than that we're all simulacra existing inside the fever dreams of a failed think tank stooge is the notion that
America has kind of figured out that the GOP really did spend the last four years opposing everything the President and Democrats tried in order to sabotage the economy in order to try to win.
President Obama and the Democrats have succeeded at convincing voters that Republicans are trying to delay economic recovery, according to a series of recent polls.
The new data suggests that about half the country, including a majority of self-identified independents, believe that congressional Republicans are using their political power to thwart Obama’s efforts to reduce unemployment, presenting Democrats an opportunity to make this argument more explicitly as the 2012 campaign moves forward — to undercut Republicans’ claims that Obama and the Dems bear full responsibility for the economy, and to make their pattern of obstruction a real liability for them.
So there's that. But...shh...don't tell John. It'll ruin his beautiful nightmare.
