by Trish Nelson

Well, here we all are, waking up with a GOP hangover.  In my humblest of opinions, people (oops..I meant to say folks, that's the correct euphemism now) are going to be so, so very sorry they turned their backs on the only hope we have of beating back the evil GOP.  It seems that Republicans no longer have to steal elections, they can just buy them through paid advertising which serves the dual  purpose of making a ton of money for the media companies they own.

In 2008 the media created Sarah Palin out of whole cloth.  Then, they became fixated on the tea party “movement” that ultimately killed more meaningful health care reform.  They let the tea party grab all  of the air space available between then and now, including print media.  This is not because the tea party is the only subject people want to hear about.  It is because this is what the corporate owned and controlled media want us to hear about. 

One of the media-created narratives during this campaign was the idea that it is perfectly normal and natural that voters want to throw out Democrats for something the Republicans did.  Here's how it goes:  “The economy is bad and every time the economy is bad, historically,  incumbents lose.”  How many times have you heard the pundits take refuge in that statement, rather than discuss the irrationality of it?  But that is the full extent of their analysis.  Never mind the fact that the economy had its near-collapse before Bush left the White House, and voters last night put back in power the party whose policies got us here in the first place. 

I'm not a complainer about Obama.  It is my belief that our
government had become so corrupt by money and right-wingism/corporatism
by the time he won the presidency, that the fact that he accomplished
anything at all was nothing short of miraculous. 

Progressives say Obama didn't get the Democratic message out.  But Obama got no help getting that message out.  They would have had to buy advertising to get the Democratic message out.  The president had to go on the campaign trail and hold rallies like he was running for office to even get a couple of minutes of air time, and then only C-Span covered him.  Someone told me a voter asked, during the campaign, where are the Obama speeches?  Well, they're relegated to C-Span.  The networks have no obligation in  these modern times to provide public interest programming, so they just stick to their regularly scheduled TV mindless programming.

I'll save the rant about conservative talk radio for another time, but the fact that Pew Research documented that the more media coverage
there was about health care reform, the more confused the public became, is a testament to how impossible it is right now for President Obama and the Democrats to get their message before the public in a way that it can be heard and understood over the din.

During this campaign, I admit, I thought the pollsters and pundits were possibly wrong about their doom-and-gloom forecasts for Democrats, and there could be counter forces going on under the media's radar.  But I was also concerned because it appeared that Plouffe et. al. had given up on using the mass media for this campaign, thinking they could win it on the ground.  And while the ground game was formidable in 2008, it was coupled with pretty good help from the media because then they were fascinated by the Obama story, the rising star, the unlikely candidate.  And Rupert Murdoch reportedly said during '08 that he wanted Obama to do well, but only because he would be good for viewership.

But we have reason to feel like we somewhat dodged a bullet here in Iowa, even though Terry Branstad's re-election is like a reoccurring nightmare and the Vander Plaats plot to punish judges for doing their jobs worked, and a perfectly fine Secretary of State, Michael Mauro was defeated for no apparent reason, and we still have Grassley.

The second District of Iowa is extremely fortunate to have another term with the people's congressman, Dave Loebsack, who beat Miller-Meeks despite an infusion of mystery money paying for smear ads against him, and a last-minute direct mailing by Revere America, an organization founded by former New York Gov. George Pataki “to counter the forces of liberalism.”  Progressives will need to remember to support Dave Loebsack all term-long, and not wait until the next election where there will no doubt be even more corporate money dumped into defeating progressives.

Congressman Braley held  on, but it should never have been close.  They dumped 2.3 million dollars of secret money into the attempt to defeat one of the best progressive congressmen in the House of Representatives.  Progressives in the 1st District are fighters and well-organized, and will hopefully remain so in the coming days.

Congressman Boswell won another term and even though he's not exactly a progressive, he's a hell of a lot better than his GOP opponent would have been.

At this hour, I haven't got to what the Iowa legislature looks like, so I'll leave that to my capable more wonky co-editor, Paul Deaton.

Keep the faith, progressives.  Time to regroup.