When the president is elected everything changes. He rides a wave of public opinion that feels unstoppable from the other side of the tracks. The opposition party spends all of its time putting together the best talking points to attack the newfound soverign commander in ways that wont make them look petty. It doesn’t always work. One thing is for certain though, they have to hate him and there base has to hate him. Even if they don’t dislike him that much the current President has to be the worst since the last worst or worse then that.

Its marketing. You can market opposition if you do it correctly. It gives a certain degree of comfort to all voters. The ones who voted against the president in power get to say “I didn’t vote for this idiot” and use all their passion and energy to make him the bad guy. The voters for him get to flip their lid and declare “This isn’t what I signed up for!” Even if it clearly was. It makes us feel good to shake our fists at people and things that are easy to dislike. The president is that way.

A woman I work with who is a republican looked at everyone at our lunch table and said “I think he’s the devil.” She was talking about the president and I began to wonder if people will ever get tired of this easy out, the unbridled joy of Umbrage.

We’ve seen the death of the tasteful disagreement, the sensible counter-solution all of those kinds of resolutions will be things we talk to our children about and they will look at us like nuts. This is more Geraldo’s country then mine some of the time and I’m not afraid to say it.

I couldn’t have debated the woman at my lunch table. That discussion would not be a debate. My response would have turned into something ugly like “As black as he is i’m sure he looks like the devil to you. I’m sure your god looks a lot like you.”