re: #61 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

When the far-Left made similar noises and grumblings, I just laughed it off. What were they gonna do? Refuse to shower? Threaten to wear even more patchouli oil? Have a drum circle outside my window at night?

But when I hear the far-Right making similar noises and grumblings, I can’t help but notice they’re accompanied by the scents of gun oil and gun powder. With the way they’re working themselves into a frenzy, expecting Election Day to be the icing on the cake, I worry that anything less than total victory is gonna spawn more than a little violence.

Won’t happen. The Democrats can give themselves their usual 0.3 percent extra when it comes time for a recount. We’re inured to it. Apart from Bush-Gore, this has become standard. But they cannot, and would not, give themselves an extra 3 percent.

Absent conclusive and widely recognized proof of widespread and outrageously brazen cheating, there’s just no case for throwing a fit when you lose. Conservatives, after all, believe in winning and losing. They’re the ones who snort at giving everyone a trophy. Who bridle at throwing out scores and test results so as to adjust the results to fit desires, rather than accepting a reality: somebody won, somebody lost.

When a conservative loses, even if it’s a close thing [e.g. most recently NH], he just phones the winner and congratulates him (or her, in this case) and that’s that.

The losers in these races will concede, and they will tell the public that the reason they lost is that the other guy got more votes. That will take all the air out of the sails of the overconfident-before-the-event, and incredulous after-the-event, crowd.