On MSNBC-TV, yesterday was Super Tuesday. Chris Hayes was so excited last night I could hardly understand what he was saying. And Rachel was so hyper she even clapped her hands. Chris Matthews, well, Chris Matthews was so irritating that I turned off the TV and went to sleep.
Meanwhile, over on CNN, Anderson Cooper was parsing the primary results as the prelude to Anthony Bourdain’s culinary adventures.
I don’t know what Fox was doing, but I suppose they were spinning the primary results to make Hillary Clinton look bad. That’s their obsession these days, I understand.
Yet, despite the excitement on cable news, good luck trying to find the primary results in Yahoo News this morning. Their story of the day was about Rory McIlroy calling off his engagement to Caroline Wozniacki.
All I could find in Yahoo News about “Super Tuesday” was a report of Mitch McConnell’s easy win in Kentucky.
The story pointed out that the Senate minority leader won even though Tea Party groups, such as the Madison Project, the Tea Party Patriots, FreedomWorks, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, poured over $1 million into the Republican Senate primary to back his opponent, a Louisville businessman named Matt Bevin.
Bevin ended up spending more than $3 million, including $1 million of his own money. But McConnell spent more than $11 million. And he has $10 million or so left in his piggy bank to blacken the name of Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes between now and November.
Grimes, who is currently Kentucky’s secretary of state, belongs to a well-known Kentucky family and is set to give McConnell the race of his life. She might even send the Senate minority leader packing, as outside groups are pouring millions into her campaign, too.
From what I learned last night on MSNBC and CNN, the Tea Party took a beating across the country. With the ridiculously dismal showing of the “patriot” march on Washington DC, I see this as a hopeful sign that the radical right is losing its appeal, that sanity might be slowly creeping back into American politics and the drama fading away.
Is that why the 24-hour news channels are getting such low ratings? I notice that all three – Fox, MSNBC and CNN (especially CNN) – are attracting record-low audiences.
It seems the midterm elections are a big yawn as far as the American public is concerned.
Already, the pundits are talking about 2016, when the possibility of a Hillary Clinton White House candidacy provides more glitz.
With the apparent public apathy, the Tea Party losing steam and a lot of disenchanted Democrats, it looks as if turnout will be extremely low in November.
The AP analysis that I found on Google this morning spins yesterday’s primary results as evidence of a “smarter” Republican Party establishment. The writer concludes the Republican Party has cunningly moved to the right to steal the Tea Party’s thunder.
The Republicans have indeed moved way to the right – so much so that if they control Congress. the poor and the middle class will be in for a period of brutal oppression.
The way I see it, drama or no drama, this is no time for progressives to lose interest in the midterms. In a low-turnout election, our votes will count more than ever. And our votes are vital to the preservation of American society as we know it.
