My American exceptionalism fantasy is over: How these midterms sealed the deal (Delicious tears)

Salon ^ | November 6, 2014 | Andrew Cotto

[spinestein]

Every couple of election cycles, one Party or the other gets shellacked - and then we citizens are allowed to watch the winners and losers “analyze” the results for us. It seems to me that whenever the Republicans lose, they just quietly pick up the shreds of their dignity and go home to ponder for themselves what happened so they can then discuss strategy among themselves for moving forward.

There can be no doubt that the Democrats are far, far better at being sore losers. They never fail to blame everyone else for their loss (it's never their fault) and it's always attributed (in the end) to basic stupidity on the part of the voter. The reasoning being: no sensible person would ever vote against the Democrats, who are obviously the smartest people around.

This is true right now. Democratic pundits are going around complaining that middle class voters have been duped by FoxNews and the Koch Brothers into supporting the Republicans and slitting their own throats in order to benefit Big Corporations. They say this is proof that conservatives are inherently stupid because they will vote against their own economic interests.

Of course this presupposes that the liberal/progressives are actually smart enough to know what's best for everybody. Good luck winning elections with this kind of smug, arrogant attitude.

[NorthMountain]

I felt particularly emboldened when John Kerry became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential elections. Surely, a decorated war hero and an honorable veteran of the U.S. Senate from the great state of Massachusetts could make the case — particularly in light of no WMD and no embrace of the U.S. as liberators from the fractured Iraqi society — that the chicken hawks of the Bush administration did not deserve a second term.

That tells us everything we need to know about the author.

[USS Alaska]

I connected with candidate Obama on such a personal and symbolic level — not to mention a redemptive one — that his campaign and its culmination became the highlight of my standing as an American citizen.

Good grief. As much as I cheered and revered Ronaldus Magnus as the best President, he was never the "highlight of my standing as an American".

The idea of being an American is plenty.

[Oratam]

Apparently to this author, “American Exceptionalism” means “being just like Europe.”

[Oratam]

[central_va]

Germans, Italians and Japanese just hate war AFTER their failed bid to enslave the planet. So sophisticated, so enlightened.

[Diamond]

"my hope was delivered in the form of Barack Obama. I connected with candidate Obama on such a personal and symbolic level — not to mention a redemptive one. "

Idolatry is not redemptive.

[CodeToad]

“Andrew Cotto”

Interesting, that if you take his name and add just a few letters you get: “What a whiny fascist weasel who should stay in his beloved socialist utopia of a backwards cesspool of ignorance and stop bothering freedom loving Americans”

How weird is that?

[Old North State]

I think this guy just broke Obama’s record for packing “I” into a speech.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Sounds like another one who was never proud of her country until Barack Obama got elected.

And then she was not.