Will Durst - Raging Moderate

Seriously? Both political parties talking pre-emptive smack barely a week after the election. Partisan politics? Again? So soon? Not even time to catch our breath? For crum's sakes, give it a rest, you guys. Besides, shouldn't you be out on recess? After all, it's Thanksgiving. Yes. Already. The earliest Thanksgiving possible. That's what happens when November first is on a Thursday. Merchants are dancing the happy dance. Shoppers too. Retail workers, not so much. Black Friday Creep seems destined to devour Halloween.

To be perfectly honest, a four-day weekend devoted to food, family and football might be the perfect prescription distraction to help us through these rebuking times. So here's a couple rough examples of what a middle-aged, round-headed political comic counts as blessings over folded hands before performing a perfectly executed triple somersault into the gravy boat.

Barack Obama: Second-term promises much bigger knock-down, drag-out fights with the Republican House. Not to mention the Democratic Senate.

General David Petraeus: Who knew generals had groupies? Proves old high school adage: chicks dig stars. The larger the fruit salad, the more noxious the flies.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

Holey moley catfish. Well, thank god that's finally over. Further thanks that the climax was quick and clean. Almost surgical. Not as long a night as many first thought it might be. Except for Karl Rove that is, who for all we know is still scribbling numbers to prove the call on Clinton's re-election win in 1996 was premature. And as usual, Florida did all it could to gum things up, but was eventually rendered irrelevant. And long may it remain so.

In the end, President Barack Obama trounced, er, battered, um, eked-out a victory -- or to be more precise, Mitt Romney lost. Or shall we say, found a thousand ways to lose. Except for one brief, shining moment in the first debate, virtually carrying with him a defeat diviner.

And each and every one of his failures can be traced directly to females. The distaff of life. Single women. Married women. Old women. Young women. Ladies and divas and flappers and baby mamas; duchesses, priestesses, shorties and floozies. So here they are, the top ten females who cost Mitt Romney the presidency, each of them representing one of the myriad factors that helped construct the unelectable mosaic that became Bain's Captain of Industry:

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

Looking for the dead-solid skinny on the upcoming presidential election? You've come to the right place. As a public service, we're going to tell you right here and now who wins this thing, and why.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

When the end draws near and prospects darken, and polls solidify in the wrong direction, and the base sinks lower than the toenail clippings of a Galapagos turtle, does the practiced political operative give up? No sir, they whip out their secret weapon. Not the candidate's spouse. The real ace up the sleeve -- The October Surprise.

Every campaign has one. Or more. It's a piece of opposition research stashed away for a rainy day. For safe-keeping, behind glass, like a fire axe: "Open in the event of impending doom." Something so incendiary it's concealed in an asbestos-lined box buried deep in the back of the campaign manager's underwear drawer.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

A surprisingly large segment of America tuned into the first presidential debate, but for some odd reason, President Obama did not appear among them. Who was in charge of his debate prep, Clint Eastwood? Even an empty chair would have provided a sturdier obstinacy.

The Committee to Re- Elect the President will obviously try to convince us that, like the economy, the commander in chief's sub-par debate performance can be traced back to the Bush administration, but darker forces may be at work here. The Ghosts of Debaters Past.

We learned Mitt Romney wants to kill Big Bird, but that was about it as far as fireworks go. No word on the Cookie Monster. But it doesn't look good. Mr. Romney always seemed more of a Masterpiece Theatre sort of guy anyway.

Perhaps the president was suffering from altitude poisoning, or distracted by missing his 20th wedding anniversary, or maybe the duties of Leader of the Free World are more exhausting than one thinks, because he fumbled and rambled, and gave the overall impression he was told the winner would be determined by time of possession.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate


It's time to start worrying about Mitt Romney. Seriously. The guy may just be running the worst campaign ever. And yes, that includes the McDLT, print ads for organic hemp underwear and France in '39. Not to mention McCain/Palin in '08. Which currently holds the gold standard for lousy campaigns. Sure to be a Hall of Fame inductee in a couple years.

Willard has taken bad to a whole new level. Bad like a dumpster behind a fish market during a garbage strike bad. Bad like a three-dollar Dark Knight Rises DVD bought off a Times Square cardboard table with Albanian subtitles bad. Bad like Todd Akin at a NARAL benefit bad. Bad doubled down. Beyond breaking bad to the point of broken bad.

And every time the former Governor of Massachusetts opens his mouth, it gets worse. He's tone deaf, tongue tied, logically challenged and as approachable as a near-sighted porcupine in heat. The Anti Ray Romano -- Nobody Loves Mitt.

So uncomfortable around real people, you can practically hear him whisper "icky, icky, icky," under his breath while shaking hands at rallies. You know there's an aide with a bottle of hand sanitizer waiting for him on the bus. Maybe even a 55-gallon drum connected to a shower head.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

Let's speak about The Bounce, shall we? The Bounce being the jump that a three-day, red-white-and-blue infomercial is expected to produce on a candidate's polling. The idea is to use The Bounce as a slingshot of momentum to whip you down the campaign straightaway directly into the swivel seat behind the desk of the Oval Office. Or close enough to let the Supreme Court appoint you. One or the other.

What usually happens, after both conventions have drop-kicked their last balloon, is an equilibrium is struck. One side goes up four to six points, then the other side goes up four to six points and you're pretty much back to where you started. The Bounce evens out. Not very exciting. Like sugar-free cookies. Or kissing Andrea Mitchell. Knocking back a shot of non-alcoholic wine. Otherwise known as grape juice.

This time around, the net result of two weeks in the Southeast in the dead of summer is President Barack Obama got a cumulative bump of between 3 and 5 points. Hard to say which event was more responsible for his ascension: his own Democratic National Convention, the Republican National Convention or Hurricane Akin.

Gov. Mitt Romney got the same kind of Bounce you'd expect from an anvil dropped onto a swamp. Even his own staff called it "not large." Yeah. Not large being a euphemism for non-existent. It was not large in the same way that August in Charlotte does not feature a cluster of destination luge runs. Similar to how Kim Kardashian is not a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist. Banana fritters aren't magnetic. An echoing abyss of whistling emptiness.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

And now a few words on the Democratic National Convention, which was ALSO interrupted by bad weather, and from this we can deduce that God is not overly fond of politicians. Proving that he/she indeed has something in common with a majority of the American public. We are special.

The Dems opened their quadrennial confab headlining Michelle Obama, and the president's wife loud wowed the crowd. Authentic and classy and inspiring, people immediately started examining the 25th Amendment for loopholes that would allow the First Lady to jump to the top of the line of succession. At least leapfrog Boehner. If not Biden.

The next day, Elvis re-entered the building. The Obama folks buried their '08 bones of resentment in yesterday's backyard to let the Big Dog off-leash, and the whole house howled at the moon. For 48 minutes, Bill Clinton barked it out old-school. Some naysayers scoff the only reason he was in North Carolina was confusion over whether Charlotte was host city or a dinner date set up by Eharmony.com.

No matter the motive compelling the 44nd POTUS to attend, it became obvious from the get-go that whatever it was that Hillary's husband at one time had, he's still got it. In spades.

While thunder rumbled just outside the Time Warner Cable Arena the real electricity was on the inside. Single-handedly he systematically laid out the most persuasive argument yet to re-elect President Bill Clinton... er, unh, Barack Obama.

Delegates swooned. MSNBC collectively spilled coffee on their laps wetting themselves. Even Michelle couldn't hide a secret grin. Wouldn't be surprised to find out Ann Romney had one too. Perhaps even he with the lean and hungry look, Paul Ryan.

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

And now a few words about the Republican National Convention. AKA: Women with Big Hair and the Men in White Shoes Who Love Them. And white certainly was the operative word in Tampa. Mashed potatoes on paper plates with a side of leeks white.

Had to feel bad for the one black guy the networks kept cutting to during the speeches. They tried everything to make him look like a crowd. Different camera angles. Probably had his own wardrobe assistant. "Now put on the cowboy hat. Okay. Okay. Let's try a handlebar mustache." Must have been someone's driver.

The first day of this GOP quadrennial confab got canceled for the second consecutive conference due to a hurricane bearing down on the city of New Orleans. The only two tropical storms to threaten the Crescent City since Katrina. Hey, guys, want some crow sprinkles on that karma cone?

But any worry about the optics of unrestrained celebration while parts of the country drowned faded fairly quickly. "Oh, quit your belly aching. At least your pesky drought is over." And with that, the convention shifted into stealth mode.

The festive conservatives were so successful at concealing their core convictions, that at times it was difficult to discern which party was nominating whom. "We're saving Medicare." "The Party of Diversity." "Our Platform May Say No Abortions, No Exceptions, But We Haven't Even Read It." "Dubyah Who?" "Mitt What?"

Will Durst - Raging Moderate

With the election slipping away like a handful of mercury on a turbocharged merry-go-round, Mitt Romney managed to change the conversation from unreleased tax returns and foreign misadventures by plucking Paul Ryan out of the Wisconsin wilds to be his running mate. "Romney-Ryan." Short, alliterative and one syllable more conservative than "Obama-Biden."

The situation appeared so desperate the choice couldn't wait until after closing ceremonies of the Olympics, forcing the House Budget Committee chairman to share the weekend spotlight with enough English pop stars to clear out the hairspray aisle at seven Boots drug stores. The Republican Congressman may be famous for his P90x work-out regimen, but the Spice Girls have much better legs. And they're way older.

Ryan was universally hailed as a bold choice. Yeah, well, maybe, but bold is not always synonymous with good. Whiskey for breakfast is a bold choice. Spun glass underwear is bold. Forehead dragon tattoos. Passing an 18-wheeler on a blind curve doing 80 in the rain. Incredibly bold. Not necessarily smart.

Another white male Christian conservative. That is bold. But only when not compared to absolutely anything else. It's been speculated a major reason for awarding the Wisconsin congressman the prize spot at the bottom of the bumper sticker was to energize the base. And total slam-dunk there. The question is: Which base?

Republicans are shaking like a Brazilian supermodel on a Lake Superior beach shoot in January. Only happier. Haven't seen them this excited since John McCain hooked up with some governor of Alaska. Meanwhile, Democrats are salivating so uncontrollably, they'd be advised to invest in bibs to keep from soiling their $5,000 Man-of-the-People suits.