The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for November, 2024

As I've noted before, this is a month which, due to the vagaries of the calendar, affords us the opportunity to present not two, but three Ass Clown Awards. We're already one ahead, since I presented an out-of-cycle special award last week, but this is not a time to slack off.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, I have decided to designate as 

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for November, 2024

The Democratic Party

Seldom (if ever) in our history has a political party done such a colossally poor job of reading the mood of the voters and so decisively lost an election that was theirs to win. I have presented this award to the Republican Party a towering 18 times (including three Ass Clown of the Year Awards), as well as to individual Republicans and subsets and conservative spinoffs of the party. This time the Democrats - who have one this award three times, twice in joint awards with the GOP*) - stand head and shoulders above all competition.

The autopsies and recriminations about what happened will go on for years, but a few things are clear, at least to me:

1. American voters have short memories, and have shut out the chaos, ineptitude, corruption, brutality, illegality, and crass buffoonery of Der Furor's first term;

2. American voters always blame the party currently in power for their woes, rightly or wrongly; 

3. Democratic focus on Der Furor's manifest unfitness for office caused the campaign to ignore issues that were of more immediate importance to the electorate (such as the visibly, painfully high cost of food, gas, and housing); 

4. Democrats put too much emphasis on a wish list of issues important to hardcore progressives but unpopular with or irrelevant to most Americans (such as transgender issues and rights for illegal immigrants); 

5. The Democrats overestimated American electorate's interest in some foreign policy issues (such as Ukraine) and underestimated it in others (such as the war in the Middle East, which pissed off both Arab and Jewish voters, both of whom blamed the sitting administration for not siding with them); and,

6. The average American, being woefully ignorant of economics, trade issues, and world affairs, turned to the party that offered satisfyingly simplistic solutions and told them what they wanted to hear, and shut out the party that didn't do a good enough job of presenting accurate, if unpleasant truths.

One hopes that from the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party will arise a new, better focused, and more realistic party ready to improve the lives of everyday Americans and clean up the economic and international political disaster that Der Furor will leave in his wake. This has been the job of the Democratic party through our recent history ... cleaning up the mess.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, the tinfoil and toilet paper crown designating November's Left-Cheek Ass Clown goes to the Democratic Party. The GOP will claim it back soon enough.

Have a good day and come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday - you know you need it.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* September, 2011 (shared with the GOP); October 2018 Left-Cheek (shared with the GOP); and November 2021 Right-Cheek (solo award).