For weeks, Angry Ed Schultz, possibly the most emotional person on television, had been promising that he was going to do his MSNBC show direct from the state capital of Madison on Election Day in Wisconsin when the labor unions hoped to recall six Republican state senators because they supported a new ordinance trimming their collective bargaining privileges.
Them there cheated Democrats, he bellowed every night, friend of the working people (meaning the blessed poor and the virginal middle class), by thunder, were going to make them there mean ol’ Republican rascals wish they never had elected Scott Walker governor last November. This was going to be a thrilling harbinger of the ’12 Presidential election when Swishy was going to swat away the pesky Republicans as if they were horseflies.
Eddie My Boy reminds me of a souped-up old car lurching down a country road, careening back and forth across the narrow pavement that rises in the middle, practically exceeding airplane speed limits, cursing as he flew.
The Democrats only had to win three of the six races to gain control of the Wisconsin State Senate and block every initiative Gov. Walker would foolishly dare to attempt until his own humiliating recall election next year.
Hear Ye and Ye
Mr. Schultz thumped his tub on every program, how the deprived, wronged Democrats were not going to just defeat the Republicans, but punish them, hopefully behead them.
If you ever have watched a Little League game, you know the better team wins maybe 51 percent of the time and the lesser side 49 percent — or it seems that way.
Mr. Schultz tooted too loudly, though, which blowhards do 100 percent of the time.
He was so heated up you would have thought it was Eddie My Boy’s wedding day. Surrounded by a cheerleading, sign-shlepping crowd of slightly crude labor union-types in the midst of one of the most politically liberal communities in the country, Mr. Schultz was primed for cable television’s first live hanging.
Let the Count Begin
Republicans won the first two races. No problem, Dems swore. Now Democrats have to win three of the remaining four. Easy, predicted his adjacent panel of Dem experts. A Democrat won. Mr. Schultz remained on the air even after his program ended, and then he went into a third hour, in the Rachel Maddow time slot. One race remained, and the Democrats had to win it to gain the upper hand. With the fragility of the outcome still in doubt, Mr. Schultz’s tone became increasingly darker. Then he disappeared. He never conceded defeat, just left the air with the outcome in doubt. He reminded me of a mentally slippery old man. His last two bites of ice cream are dribbling down his chin, unnoticed, except by all the people in the room.
Republicans won four out of six to retain their majority in the upper chamber, and with two Democrats up for recall next Tuesday, the GOP may pad their lead.
Meanwhile, the Angry Left, or progressives, as the less secure refer to themselves, does not take defeat well. The New York Times, the partisan print equivalent of MSNBC, which people read these days more for yucks than news, still is denying the sizable Democrat/labor union defeat.
We Won, We Won, Didn’t We?
The result — if I may cough and clear my throat — was hidden on Page A-13 of yesterday’s edition. Had the thugs won, it probably would have led the newspaper. The Times skipped the news story reporting the defeat and told one of their weakest girl reporters to write an obsequious piece about how the Democrats did not really lose.
The unbelievable headline atop the Times’s editorial read:
“Wisconsin’s Warning to Union-Busters”
“Republicans paid a price for their anti-union law, even if Democrats had hoped for more”
What defeat?
That, boys and girls, is how you convert stinging defeat into singing victory — you just tell the ignorant peasants, the Democrat base, that them there Republican rascals lied, that our side, the good guys, actually won.
In 17 sentences of the editorial, the Times never managed to say that the Republicans won the day, spanked the Democrats, denied them the majority they were brazenly confident of winning, and predicting to everyone with a laptop, microphone or pencil.
A therapist could make enough money to retire on if he took the author of this Fiction Story of the Year editorial as a client. What an imagination.
Calling up 63 different Angry Left talking points, the Times said that by gum, we showed them there cowboys. “Democrats…were also trying to send a warning to Republican lawmakers around the country who are trying to break public employee unions. In that, they succeeded.”
Well, pal, let me tell you friends of working families that if losing ballyhooed elections is your idea of success, may you repeat this identical success when Swish tries to win back the White House in 15 months.
Or, as they say at MSNBC, Anchors Aweigh.
