UNFORTUNATELY, IT'S NOT ABOUT TRUTH

Hopefully, the obvious lies and misrepresentation and hypocrisy of the new Tea Party darling who won the Republican primary in Delaware will ensure a Democratic victory in the Senate race there in November. But don't count on it, even if she's behind in the polls.

This isn't about what the Tea Partyers say it's about, at least not for enough of them to elect anyone. It's about identification and visceral reactions.

This new darling,Christine O'Donnell, could be one of my cousins or nieces. Her Irish mug—still pretty if not as beautiful as when she was younger—her "Irish" brand of Catholicism (whether actively practiced or not, the residue of that upbringing still resonates in most of my clan)—the delight and openness in her childlike smiles seemingly so innocent and honest, her plain-spoken conversational speaking style, her slightly widening figure as she ages, making her attractiveness more accessible, more common, more nonthreatening.

Everything in this woman's record shows what a hypocritical manipulative liar she is, and yet everything in her presence, at least on TV, makes her seem sincerely genuine and completely well intentioned. Innocently naive perhaps, but not calculatingly phony.

So when her critics raise the question of what qualifies this woman for a seat in the Senate that she says she deserves because she wants to set the nation's fiscal house in order, when in fact she has been unable to do that in her own life throughout her entire adult years so far...

...and when those critics point out that she is running as a "real" person, an ordinary citizen, against professional politicians, but that is all she has been since she was a teenager, creating and running a political organization presented as a religious one, and living (illegally it seems) off political campaign funds for years, even when those years weren't election years, etc. etc. etc....

...and when they point out all the many contradictions and hypocritical positions and actual failures of judgment and execution of almost any of what she claims she stands for...

...a lot of folks who don't read or watch any real news but just watch FOX News (and that's A LOT of folks) or listen to Rush et. al. or don't even do that but just live their lives and get their information in bits and pieces from friends and family and just don't like the way things are going or feel Obama has let them down promising hope and change but not delivering that in their experience for them because he's too intellectual and thoughtful which they read as aloof and because he's obviously handsome and now wealthy and now powerful in many ways and went to Ivy league universities and often talks and acts like he is and did...

...and because he wisely gave them a tax break that only came through as a reduction in taxes on their pay stubs which they may have never even noticed, or if they did, quickly began to take it for granted, and though economists say that's the best way to help the economy—i.e. tax cuts in what's taken out weekly or monthly in pay checks for working people, rather than all-at-once refund checks in the mail one time only, the latter is what people remember and notice, even if they don't spend it but put it away or pay off old debts with it which doesn't expand the economy etc. so they don't connect any tax break with him Obama and his fellow Democrats...

...and because as Bill Maher said in that interview on Larry King the other night, I think it was him, the Democrats have done more to help more people but the Republicans tell a better story, or as others have said, they know how to frame the issues to make themselves look good and the Dems bad, whereas the Dems get bogged down in subtleties and nuances and wonkish or just dry statistics and theories and bigger-picture explications whereas the right just keeps it simple—government bad/people good etc....

...and frankly because the Tea Party has also fielded folks who are more telegenic, like Palin and now O'Donnell, but even Joe Miller, even that nut case in Nevada is more telegenic than Harry Ried...and because most people respond, as new brain studies have shown, to simple messages that cast topics in black and white simplicity, and to faces that are pretty and childlike (O'Donnell looks sometimes like an overgrown infant or little girl and Rand Paul often looks like an excited school boy)...

...and because most people feel overwhelmed by all the information and technology that is the atmosphere we move through every day and their inability to make sense of it they not only grasp onto anything that keeps it simple and makes simple sense to them, but they also identify with those who seem to have the same troubles...

...so that O'Donnell's financial troubles don't disqualify her to handle the nation's troubles but just makes her more like them. And the Buffalo multi-millionaire who won the Republican primary for governor of New York doesn't seem crude and angry (as Rachel Maddow unsuccessfully tried to cast him in last night's show, disappointingly, even when she ultimately made it clear she thinks that's just an act for political gain and she's right about that I believe) despite his record of sending not just hardcore porn to friends and associates through e mails but bestiality etc. which would seem to put him at odds with his fellow Tea Partyer O'Donnell who came out against not just any kind of abortion including in cases of rape and incest but against any kind of sexuality outside of marriage including masturbation etc. but DOESN'T in the minds of many of the Tea Party supporters and sympathizers because it just makes Palladino seem more real, more working-class, more of a man and a regular guy even though he is worth more than more of the tea Party followers put together...

....and if he isn't that lady who ran the wrestling empire with her husband who won the Republican primary for Senator in Connecticut sure can, she's richer than entire states, but because her husband also exemplifies the crude and lewd and over-the-top simplicity of fake wrestling and fake emotions and fake almost everything it seems, but she can say "yes he's colorful" and chuckle and dismiss it because "he's not running for office, I am" as she put it last night on one of the news shows, she can come across as just "real" and not a phony like that Obama who had to walk a fine line between two racial perspectives and expectations and learned to bridge gaps and defuse stereotypical perceptions and the judgements that went with them, etc. but rarely seems like he fought his way out of poverty and prejudice to achieve what he did, which he did, but comes across more like he was entitled to what he has because he's smarter and handsomer than most of us, etc...

...and because the media has turned politics into a horse race and a beauty contest and a sound bite competition for the most part and relinquished their responsibility to just present the facts which indisputably refute almost every claim the Tea Party candidates make for why they would be better at running the country...

...for all those reasons and more, don't be surprised if what the Dems and some of the media are trying to marginalize as "fringe" or "extreme" or "out of the norm" Tea Party candidates actually do decide whether the Congress ends up controlled by Republicans come November. It's not like it hasn't happened before with Reagan ousting Carter (in a party that professes to be Christian and anti-Hollywood!) and Bush/Cheney winning two terms even if illegally, the vote was close enough that they could get away with it in a situation where they should have been trounced, etc. etc.etc...