The Parody Cannot Hear the Parodyer

I’ve had multiple requests to eviscerate analyze that Slate MESSAGING thing, but since I’m too tired right now on a related note allow me to observe that poor Glem has the toughest job on the internets:

Unless they don’t win, then I was right all along.

— Glem (@GlemGreenwald) November 5, 2018

Apparently multiplying the electoral analyses of Stoller and Greenwald produces a howling void that is the opposite of wisdom.

Stoller: “Sure, Dems winning the House might mean 23 million people don’t lose their healthcare, but if it means more Mom jokes I’m not sure it would be worth it.” These people sometimes use the language of moral seriousness but at bottom they’re as consumingly obsessed with inane theater-critic trivia and as indifferent about the outcome of elections as Maureen Dowd herself. (Well, actually, that’s unfair to Dowd, who can at least see that Republicans winning is bad ex post although never ex ante.)

Greenwald: “Having been arguing for nearly two years that Democrats will lose in 2018 because they’re talking about nothing but PUTIN, as they do regularly in my head, let me now be clear that while the 2012 and 2018 elections were determined solely by structural factors, the 2010, 2014 and 2016 elections were determined solely by the tactical choices of the DNC. Also, Democrats winning the popular vote by 8 points — which surely happens in pretty much every midterm — is central to my point that the Democrat Party is collapsing.”

It’s hard out there for a parodist.