What does $1,605,000,000 get you in American politics? Little more than a continuation of the status quo and maybe, if you’re lucky, the ability to roll joints in the Southern Rockies. In an election where the potential for major shakeups was highly probable, most of us woke up Wednesday, rubbed our eyes and realized that Barack Obama won the electoral slug fest, the Democrats retained control of the Senate, and John Boehner will continue to be the butt of late night jokes.
According to the New York Times, it cost El Duce nearly $1,000,000,000 to remain in the Oval Office. Seems it would’ve been a lot more cost effective had he just publicly declared his closet dictatorship before the election process ever began. On the flip side Mitt Romney spent over $750,000,000, had the advantage in Super PAC spending and still saw his bid for the White House fall short of an electoral college victory.
Clearly, a cash influx was never the problem for either candidate. It would appear that messaging was the bigger problem. The electorate was presented with lofty soaring rhetoric about shared prosperity and they swooned..again. Mitt Romney lobbied for a return to traditional America and a majority of Americans decided they would rather closet the Norman Rockwell America in favor of an America that Vladimir Lenin would salivate over.
For all the media fuss over Super PACs and specifically the influence of “right wing” PACs on the election, the panic was misplaced. The media’s candidate of choice won re-election and now the honeymoon continues.
Just think of all the free condoms $1,605,000,000 could have bought.
