One party thinks it's in favor of business and economic growth. It's not thinking very hard. The GOP has done nothing about the nation's burgeoning debt and deficit. If Republicans were financial advisers, they'd take a look at your huge credit-card bills, delinquent car loan, and outsized mortgage debt and tell you to quit making loan payments and go on a spending spree.
You'd say, "But I'll lose the house!" And Republicans would say, "Heck, we lost the House. So what?"
The other party is convinced that everything is free. Health care is free. College tuition is free. Parental leave is free. Not that parents need it, since daycare is also free. Democrats should go into a butcher shop and announce that beef is free... and get clocked on the head by a butcher wielding a frozen rib roast. (Except Democrats will ban meat because animals are free, too.)
Meanwhile, Republicans claim that free trade isn't free and costs too much and this means war. Because... the way to deal with the giant Walmart that is China is to burn it down and get swell bargains afterward at the fire sale.
Which makes Democrats scared that real war will break out and, when the world is destroyed by nuclear holocaust, women and minorities will be hardest hit.
But, Republicans say, what we really should panic about is thousands of jobless Hondurans and Guatemalans invading our southern border. Never mind that with the current unemployment rate, I can't find anybody to mow my lawn, not even for $18 an hour. So, privately, I'm thinking of the Hondurans and Guatemalans as "The March for Yard Care."
And what's worst of all about these two political parties is that on Tuesday, November 6 both of them won.
Now we've got a Saphead Senate and a House of Fools.
One chamber of Congress will be carting tax cuts to hell while the other is letting expenditures ascend into heaven. The House will squat like a toad on deregulation while the Senate confirms lizards and snakes to head regulatory agencies. Progressives will subpoena everyone in America who wears a necktie. Conservatives will console each of them with a large defense contract. One side will hobble businesses. The other will hamstring consumers. Liberals will kiss the ass of our enemies. Reactionaries will piss off our allies. The left will imagine new grievances for minorities. The right will fantasize about old majority prejudices. Democrats will lead the bull into the china shop. Republicans will pack the dog with the cat.
Refereeing this hard-fought, down-to-the-wire, tied 1-1 in extra innings contest between asshats is... President Trump.
Let us not get ourselves all a-twitter – so to speak – about what we think of President Trump. Whether you approve, or grudgingly approve, or disapprove, or abhor him with bells on... whatever you think of President Trump, he's not exactly the person you'd pick as an umpire.
If the 116th Congress were the World Series and Trump was the umpire, he'd send both teams to the showers so that he could be the pitcher and the batter and throw every strike and hit every home run... And he'd also want to be the only hot dog vendor in the stadium.
This game is not going to end well.
Which is why – history of post-midterm market upticks notwithstanding – I was surprised when the Dow went up 545 points.
On the other hand... "Crazy" is not the same as "wrong." Perhaps markets were trying – in their own crazy way – to tell politics something on November 7.
This is what I'd like to think the markets were attempting to say in their delirious ravings:
We're the economy! We're the grown-ups here! We pay the bills! We're the parents and you political parties are the quarreling teenage kids. We're sick of you two fighting all the time. You're making a mess! You're in the way! We've got jobs, we've got work to do, we've got businesses to run! If you're going to fight, take your stupid fight somewhere else, someplace nobody cares about, a place that's already wrecked – like Washington! And not only are we kicking you out, you're grounded until 2020!
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