The Next Wave

The midterms, astronauts & the tightest of races.

I don’t know about you but The Day After was distressing for me. In some ways, I felt optimistic. Like when you think you’re going to fail a test but instead you get a D and you’re fine with that. Or you feel like, well, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been! We may have lost the House and potentially the Senate but at least Dr. Oz lost! This is not exactly some huge victory that we just pulled off. We were only able to stave off the BIG RED MONSTER TIDAL WAVE AS PREDICTED BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW ABOUT AS MUCH AS MY PUG.

Anyone who still watches the polls (like, say, me) is wasting their likely not-so-valuable time. In my defense, I’ve always been fascinated with tragically flawed statistical models. The fact that Raphael Warnock is in a tight runoff with Herschel Walker is unbelievable. We can’t win against this clown? It’s embarrassing. And I’m not easily embarrassed. Just ask anyone in college who saw me do a keg stand.

Then there’s incumbent Sen. Mark Kelley in Arizona, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords who almost died after being shot on the campaign trail. He’s an astronaut. AN ASTRONAUT. You can’t win against AN ASTRONAUT. Or can you? Challenger and hard-line nationalist Blake Masters seems to think so. He believes the election was stolen and that gun violence is because of gangs “living in Chicago and St. Louis” and very often committed by “Black people.” He is not an astronaut.

Also in Arizon, there’s the gubernatorial race between Katie Hobbs and former journalist and former Democrat Kari Lake. Lake is, how do I put this, just cringe-y (my daughter’s favorite word after iPad). She’s an election denier, a Covid denier and a reality denier. She used to be a Buddhist. I’m sure she’s been trying to scrape that “Coexist” bumper sticker off her Dodge Ram since 2020.

Now let’s turn to Lauren Boebart of Colorado. Lauren Boebert’s race is still undecided because apparently it’s tough to choose between a Democrat or a psychopath. She’s running against Adam Frisch, who I assume is not an astronaut but, let’s face it. He could be one of those guys riding the Zamboni around the ice skating rink and he’d still be the superior candidate by far.

But really, who cares about Tuesday night when we can start prognosticating on who the Republican nominee will be after Trump gracefully passes the torch to the new face of the Republican party? CNN has started calling DeSantis “DeFuture.” DeFuture? It doesn’t even rhyme.

And what is with this dress? It’s like Julie Andrews from Sound of Music grabbed some gilded dining room curtains and threw them on the first lady of Florida.

So there was no red wave. There was no blue wave. The midterms were more like a kiddie pool with a bunch of toddlers in diapers and a group of parents pretending that their kid didn’t just poop in the pool.

We’ve got to do better. Not just, it could’ve been worse. But better.