A Previous Message Repeated, Slightly More Forcefully

Dear Democrats, liberals and the like:

(tough love comments hidden behind the cut)

I know it’s a lot to ask at the moment, but could you possibly please stop publicly losing your shit all over the goddamn place? Honestly, it’s embarrassing. Did you really not know that coming out of the GOP convention, the GOP candidate might have a poll bounce? Likewise, were you somehow surprised that the GOP might try very hard to make this campaign about something other than actual issues? Did you expect them to try to run on the last eight years, or even pretend that they own them? What the fuck is wrong with you?

No, seriously: What the fuck is wrong with you? The GOP picks a woman VP 24 years after you do, for the same goddamn reason you did (a contentless call to shore up a shrinking base), and you act like you’ve never seen this movie before? I just don’t know what to say to you about that. Also: squirting yourself messy over a vice presidential candidate. Good fucking gravy, how off the fucking script can you possibly get. For God’s sake, she’s scandal-plagued Atwater spawn from a state with the population of Fort Worth, Texas, whose job it will be to work the lights of the Naval Observatory for four years. She’s a walking, taking advertisement for how easily placated religious conservatives are at this moment in history. She doesn’t walk on water, unless it’s frozen and the moose she’s hunting has wandered out on it. So will you please focus.

Please accept that this contest is going to be close. Please accept that you will have to fight for it tooth and nail. Please accept that the GOP will feast on every single fucking instance in which you show even the slightest hint of entitlement to the presidency. Please accept that the GOP SOP is to win by any means necessary, and that they’ve cultivated an entire generation of political strategists and media lackeys who can’t think in any other way, and whose allegiance to the party is reflexive and far stronger than their interest in things like facts. Please accept that the entire thrust of the GOP strategy between now and November is to keep knocking actual issues out of the political news cycle. Please stop acting surprised and resentful about any of this. The GOP will crush you — again — if you keep doing it. For fuck’s sake, they’ve played you exactly the same way since the 2000 election. Will you please exhibit a learning curve. You’ve been here before.

Now, again, please: Take a nice, deep cleansing breath, center yourself, have some tea, and get a goddamn grip. It’s going to be a long two months and if you’re all going off the rails at the slightest hint that this election is not, in fact, a pro forma coronation, it’s going to be even longer still. And you know what? As long as the next two months will be for you, it’ll be nothing like what the next four years will be like if you don’t calm down, get your shit together, and fight like you mean it. So settle down. Get some perspective. Focus.

Thank you for your attention.