One good thing that came out of the 2010 election: the Blue Dogs were slaughtered.  They were a major stumbling block in 2008-10.  

A hopeful sign over the past year was Obama's feeble tries over the last year to get some Keynesian stimulus passed.  Another is Reid's statement he will remove the 60 vote majority and other archaic Senate rules if he is Senate Majority Leader.  

And la-dee-dah-dee-dah.

<shrug>

Who knows?

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Is America great or what?  Even the mentally ill can own guns and "large quantities of ammunition."

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Wikipedia: Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 2002

O'Brien's campaign was hobbled by the short amount of time between the primary and general election, and by her having exhausted most of her funds by spending $4.5 million to win the nomination. She focused her attacks by portraying Romney as being out of place in Massachusetts. Romney had stumbled earlier in the year by not knowing that "MCAS" stood for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System of school exams. To soften his image of being rich and privileged and a wealthy corporate buyout specialist out of touch with the needs of regular people - an image that had damaged him in his 1994 U.S. Senate race - a series of "work days" had been staged over the summer, in which Romney performed blue-collar jobs such as herding cows and baling hay, unloading a fishing boat, and hauling garbage. Television ads highlighting the effort, as well as one portraying his family in gushing terms and showing him shirtless, received a poor public response. O'Brien now said in response that "Massachusetts doesn't need a governor who thinks getting in touch with working people is a costume party." She said Romney was "trying to mask a very conservative set of belief systems"; while saying she would not criticize his membership in the LDS Church, she attacked his substantial donations to Brigham Young University, objecting to their bar on expressions of homosexuality. O'Brien came out in support of same-sex marriage. Romney declared support for faith-based initiatives. Romney campaigned as a pro-choice candidate who would protect a woman's right to an abortion, and he rejected the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a pro-life organization.

Romney ran as a political outsider, just as he had in the 1994 U.S. Senate election, and as an agent of change, saying he would "clean up the mess on Beacon Hill." He said he was "not a partisan Republican" but rather a "moderate" with "progressive" views (although John W. Sears and several other state Republicans would later say Romney was from the more conservative side of the Massachusetts party).

...

By mid-October, the backfiring television ads had contributed to Romney being behind O'Brien in polls. He rebounded with negative ads that accused O'Brien of being a failed watchdog for state pension fund losses in the stock market, specifically featuring a basset hound sleeping as bad men removed bags of money from the Massachusetts treasury, and that associated her husband, a former lobbyist, with the Enron scandal. Debates held instanced O'Brien attacking Romney repeatedly; he ended up referring to her style as "unbecoming", which engendered criticism that he was insensitive to women.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

Let's be honest, in a race where the serious choices were Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and the Willard, you'd have to admit he's probably the nearest thing they had to a sane choice.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Actually it's not the fault of the geniuses in the party that are the problem, it's the primary system that's the problem--and it applies to both sides. In the good old days, a bunch of professional politicians would go into a smoke filled room and decide who had the best chance of winning the election. Regardless of motivation, their purpose was to actually win.

Since the Democratic fiasco in 1968, we have primaries where regular voters decide the candidates. This is a huge disaster because it tends to select for the most extreme on either side. Right now it's working out ok for the Democrats, but that's mostly just luck.

So the Republicans went through this clown parade of Tea Party candidates, none of whom could even pass muster in their own state-by-state process. Romney is not actually so bad, considering what they could have out there. But "not so bad" isn't good enough, is it?

Somebody like Boehner could have tried to fix the mess, but he had already been through the wringer a few times already with the Tea Party and would rather live out his next couple of terms and retire rather than confront the broken-ness of the system.

In any case, get ready for two clown parades in 2016.