Searching the alt news sites today, I feel compelled to offer a little grab-bag of nuggets. The first thing to catch my eye was Alternet’s call to progressives to keep their heads high and looking forward, titled It’s Not the End of the World — 7 Things Progressives Need to Keep in Mind About Last Night’s GOP ‘Wave’. No one is saying we don’t have our work cut out for us, but the trends and statistics the author cites at least provide a starting place to regroup and a long view to bear in mind.
Next up, I found myself on Democracy Now! reading Amy Goodman’s interview with Michael Moore from last night. Amidst his thoughts about what Obama would likely say today — versus what he needs to say and do to keep progressives with him — and the possibility of a rare four-candidate race for President in 2012 (Lincoln won the first of those, with 39% of the vote), he discussed Christine O’Donnell’s concession speech:
It was interesting watching Christine O’Donnell’s sort of concession speech tonight. I don’t know if you saw it while you guys were in here, but it will be on YouTube on—more on the comedy channel than anything, but it’ll—you have to watch it, because it was interesting. And she got 40 percent of the vote. “I’m not a witch” got 40 percent. That’s where we live. But she was criticizing the Democrats, and she sort of made a kind of a veiled threat to the person who beat her, like he better do this and he better do that. But it wasn’t ’til she attacked the Republican, she got—that’s where she got the loudest applause in the room. It was the attack on the Republicans.
If people think that they’re going to be spending a lot of time going after us and our issues, they’re going to be very occupied with each other, because they’re involved in their own civil war.
Of course, after reading that, I had to hear O’Donnell’s speech for myself — especially given the attention her ideas about sex, masturbation and being a witch have gotten on the pages of Planet Waves.