Exit stage right. We can now bid a not-so-fond farewell to an entire supporting cast of chumps, crooks, liars and scoundrels, as well as to the ideologies, philosophies and rightwing pathologies that animated them. They all became instantly obsolete the moment the sun rose on Wednesday morning.

Sarah Palin

Until her wooden second appearance on Saturday Night Live on election eve – was someone messing with her cue-cards? – I thought that this champion shopper and breathtaking ignoramus – a poisonous pot pourri of Poujade, Pauline Hanson and Peggy Hill – had a great future in show business ahead of her. Now? Not so much. She's strictly local news; not ready to go national. Using the final days of the campaign to audition for the leadership of the George Wallace wing of the Republican far-right, this shrewd, narrow-minded egomaniac and dirty-fighter fully deserves to inherit the Nativist remnant whose malevolent passions she so gamely stoked for two months. But internecine post-electoral cat-fighting suggests her own party plans to wipe her off the map.

Joe the Plumber

The current state-of-the-art in low-wattage blue-collar bozodom (along with his gratingly belligerent compadre Tito the Builder proudly sports the Vic Mackey-Vin Diesel-Mr Clean baldie-Aryan Brotherhood look, and proudly spouts the most egregious varieties of prison-yard libertarianism and boondocks cluelessness. Even Fox News was appalled. By campaign's end, he and Palin – "two fictional characters", as singer John Legend tartly dubbed them – had come to resemble Il Duce and his luckless mistress Clara Petacchi – and look what became of them. And, oh yeah, he's not a plumber and his name's not Joe – even the "the" is currently in dispute. His next rendezvous is with History's U-bend. But let's give thanks for this.

Hubris, meet Nemesis.

The Axis of Atwater

Lee, that is, bottom-dwelling mentor to Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed (the disposable hucksters of hypocrisy), whose vilely gleaming scum-track runs from Willie Horton to William Ayers. Dirty slash-and-burn politics will never die, but we may yet enjoy a short breather. We deserve it.

Ayn And Al

The high priestess of the nonsensical pseudo-philosophy of Objecitivism, "friendly witness" before HUAC, tireless despiser of socialism and altruism, and cult-leader to a coterie of fanatically compliant devotees, including egghead economist and former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. The latter's dedicated application of Randian doctrine to the American economy is in large part responsible for the state we're now in. Greenspan should now return to his original vocation as a jazz saxophonist (he once played with Stan Getz), and perhaps Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will now shelve plans to film Rand's brick-like, harrowingly tedious 1957 manifesto for egomaniacs, Atlas Shrugged.

Milton Friedman

This year's Nobel prize announcements amounted to a line-by-line repudiation of all things Bushy, brutally parceled out over the space of a week, like, (hat-tip to JG Ballard), "instalments of a death-warrant." The peace prize for a diplomat and peacemaker, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, repudiating neoconservatism and preemption; the lit prize to JMG LeClezio, an unreconstructedly experimental, poorly-selling Frenchman of the Nouvel Roman school. But the economics prize to Paul Krugman gave international legitimacy to one of Bush's staunchest and most prescient critics. Fellow econ winner the late "Uncle Milty" Friedman took a righteous and well-earned shellacking from Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine last year, and Krugman's win – to say nothing of the state we're in – eats deeply at Friedman's reputation and legitimacy. Expect to see a deluxe reprint of Keynes' The Economic Consequences of The Peace with a Krugman intro any day now. And expect it to sell.

A Golden Age of Political Satire

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, The Onion, Saturday Night Live: what happens when the golden goose, the gift that kept on giving, is gone?

The Bush Dyslexicon

"Strategery..." "It's hard to put food on yer family..." "I want gynecologists to be able to practice their love ..." How will we ever live without that foot-filled mouth? One last hurrah for the tongue-tied Texan (transcribed word for word from a live press conference, late September, as the subprime mortgage sector went belly-up):

But there's also a lot of sensible homeowners who can make men's ends meet with a little bit of help.

Is he advocating suburban gay escort-agencies or what? We need to know!

The Bradley Effect

Disputed, oft-debunked political "phenomenon" named for the lopsided, misleading poll results logged during LA Mayor Tom Bradley's 1982 California gubernatorial run – suggesting that racists wouldn't admit their true feelings about black candidates to a pollster – the Obama victory suggests instead a reverse Bradley Effect, which functions, horribly but productively, thus: racists voted for Obama. Another myth bites the dust.

Barney and the Bush Twins

My favourite White House dog in decades (since Checkers and LBJ's slavering bloodhounds) and my drinks-ahoy dream double-date Bar Junior and Jenna the Juicehead. These three I really shall miss.