Aftermath

It is said by Ralph Reed and others that in Politics its never as bad as you think when you lose, and its never as good as you think when you win. Still, overall it feels pretty good. For the first time in many years, some people I think are different enough to make a difference won, or at least wound up in a run-off.

I don't have any illusions about the national level, where the most one can hope for is gridlock, but even there people from outside the ranks of the establishment have clawed their way past the gates. The system will find ways to neutralize them, but not the ideas they espouse- if they continue to espouse them rather than follow the directives of their establishment-provided handlers to be "non-controversial." And by that of course they mean ideas of which the heartland might approve, but which the ruling class finds unacceptable.

Permit me to close by sharing with you a personal election-day anecdote. We were near the end of what was for us a long line to vote. Not all of the machines were behaving themselves. Immediately behind me was an old farmer-looking guy. Weather-beaten and tatooed, he was boxed in exactly the sort of external package that our ruling elites would tsk at. In their view, this was an example of the sort of backward bitter clingers that most needed them to run their lives for them, after reshaping their values. Mr. Farmer took one look at the room and the long line of well educated sheeple like my self, and then turned to the election official nearby. "I want a paper ballot" he said, turning away from the end of the long line and heading toward the table with a stack of ballots sitting on it with zero waiting.

He got his ballot and was done before our line moved two spaces. At that point, this college educated policy wonk who prides himself on his understanding of the process left the line to the electronic machines and meekly asked for a paper ballot like the farmer.