If this is simply a venting diary, so be it. I put it off for several days and perhaps ought to permanently, but I do want to share the reasoning for the targets of my post-election angst, even if the individuals I name are undeserved targets. Here goes. In Blakean (as in "first thought, best thought") order:
1. Mark Pryor. My personal anguish about this election really began when Pryor and some others joined McConnell's no-dice caucus and blocked the universally popular idea, that the best way to enforce laws that were ruled Constitutional in the Heller decision that keep some convicted criminals and some crazy people from buying guns is to have unobtrusive and privacy-protected background checks at the point of sale. Anyone with a brain has known that Democrats are foolish to attempt to appease the pornographers at the NRA, but Pryor for some reason thought he could. Would he have won if he had done the right thing? Maybe. Closing loopholes was a popular enough issue that it had to be an early indication to the 62 percent that there is no point voting.
2. John Morgan. The highly successful plaintiff attorney very clearly launched Florida's medical marijuana initiative to help goose Dem turnout. A it didn't work that way and B itt contributed to the idea that there is a divid between Dems and people who think of themselves as traditional. C we looked like clowns. D it heped Wyllie ore than it helped Crist.
3. Charlie Crist. Whole thing starts when Crist runs for the US Senate in 2010 because that's the office he really wants. So he changes party and runs for Governor? I have no idea if Nan Rich would have been a better candidate, but he put us in a position where we couldn't oppose having a fifth consecutive term of Republicans in the gov mansion because he was one of them. And no matte how good his fan defense looked on paper, he again gave the impression of being something other than a leader and fighter. Now, the state Dem party is just flat decimated.
4. Every candidate that ran away from the President Grimes was the showpiece for this, but we gain no respect when we don't stand up and say we support our party's titular head. This was't W at 19 percent or even Nixon having to quit. This was a president with a anti-goosed 39 percent approval rating in the sixth year of his presidency, historically the point of a president's lowest approval ratings and and usually at a far lower level than Obama's. What these idiots did was deny themselves one of the things the President does well, mobilize voters on a personal level. Gutless. Idiotic. Ultimately hrt the Party, the voters and the country even if there had been a gain. And there bleeping wasn't
5, The SCOTUS majority. Citizens United ranks with Dred Scott among the most desctructive decisions to our small r republican system. And I think everyone here realizes that a saturation point exists in which political advertising causes a direct drop in voter turnout because it disillusions voters. In a market in which most of the disillusioning is done by the money, the non-moneyed are the ones who end up not voting.
6. I'm going to get jumped o0n about this, but I can't argue to a Republican that they shouldn't elevate Mitch McConnell to majority leader because too many of us consider him to be a repugnant and soulless creep if they hold the same opinion about some of our leadership. The crux on this one is Reid. Had he made some kind of announcement that he would leave eing floor leader to concentrate on, say, a committee for which he brings expertise, I think it would have helped.
7. I'm ashamed to be an ex-journalist.
I'm stopping here rather than artificially goose this one up to 10 items. But I will say this: Howard Dean revived this party by stoking our courage.