Electioneering

American elections are like herpes - they just keep on giving!

Not that you particularly want any. Since Tuesday, the news sites of every persuasion have been flooded with noise that's not so much analysis as it's just rationalizations of what the authors want.

Like all the "progressives" celebrating how Christie won with bipartisanship and charisma and whatever. News flash for all you pseudointellectual post-irony hipsters - Chris Christie is as crooked as any other corporate suck-puppet. He'll even veto a bill that passes the New Jersey legislature by 91% if it means he can score a few votes in Iowa in 2016. His bipartisanship is a means to an end, which is his wide end planted in the oval office. He's ambition unclouded by any sort of principle and just because he doesn't look like the screaming crazies currently in the House doesn't mean he's your Great White Hope.

And on the subject of governors, let's take a look at the Commonwealth. I have yet to see any pundit acknowledge the demographic split that drove McAuliffe to victory. They all want to give the credit to the shutdown, or deny the credit to the shutdown, or entertain the Tea Party persecution complex.

Here's the thing about Virginia - the shutdown was viscerally important to one demographic and totally foreign to another. And you can see that in any district map. Northern Virginia - where all the money is federal money - went decisively for McAuliffe. My birthplace of Fairfax, not exactly a liberal hippie commune, swung blue by 72%! And the second most populous area, Charlottesville and surrounding Albermarle county, also voted Democrat. Because UVa is there and you'd best believe the Wahoos didn't want four years under the witch-finder general.

Now C-Ville may be dominated by university liberals but Northern Virginia has been strongly Republican since I can remember. Old-school, old money Republican. The kind who tolerate the anti-sex hicks who swoon over Cuccinelli if it gets them the good contracts and tax cuts. They rallied against Clinton, rallied behind Bush, supported McCain and Romeny... but they also voted for Tim Kain and Jim Webb. Because they don't give a shit about all that "liberty" and "constitution" and "islamo-commie" blather. They don't like the Democrats but they want the damn government to at least function.

And if the Tea Party has made one thing abundantly clear, it is that it will break the whole system. No matter what. If they don't get their way, smash it all. If they do, smash it all anyway. Cuccinelli demonstrated his commitment to that nihilistic jihad, pursuing one deluded cause after another as attorney general. Blocking Obamacare, criminalizing sex - if it was in the Tea Party pamphlet he did it.

That endeared him to the same mean and stupid hicks who always vote Republican anyway. I lived in central Virginia for seven years so I know these people in my goddamn blood - they are just mean and stupid. They will vote for whoever flatters their craven vanities while promising to do the most harm to coloreds and queers. This is the same third of Americans who supported Bush in 2007 when every other Republican with a career was jumping ship. The same who bought into every one of Glenn Beck's Saturday morning conspiracy theories. The same who honestly expected Romeny to win because they have as much contact with reality as the island of the lotus eaters. And they account for all of Virginia, save for little islands of blue like Arlington and Albermarle.

The only real lesson of 2013 is the one nobody will admit - for Democrats to win, campaign hard among urban non-whites and leave the hicks to stew in resentment. And if you think Virginia is somehow an aberration, just take a look at the NYC election map. American elections are now the billionaires and the hicks versus everyone else. The rest ain't even commentary.