the Tuesday after the first Monday in November

Comrades,

The beautiful chaos of the Miracle of Democracy was on full display in the US Mid Terms. Oh, yes siree...serious psephologists with the election fever would have been wetting their pants in delight. No one else does it quite like it.

Only in America could a dead white male be elected, with a cadaver winning a seat in the Nevada state legislature. Never mind that the recently deceased candidate was a prominent legal brothel owner who's as dead as a muthfukka's corpse was found in bed in unsuspicious circumstances during his 72nd birthday celebrations at the Love Ranch, by a notorious male porn-star. Dennis Hof's platform of hyper-pro-Trumpotus far-right redneck policies was enough to push his ghost over the line, so it can only be assumed that the Nevada State Capitol in Carson City will now be haunted by a pimping poltergeist.

In the starkest of contrasts, more than 100 women of all shapes and sizes and political colours and stripes were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time since universal suffrage was introduced for federal elections in The States back in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. "Coloured Peoples" of every description were also elected to a myriad of offices for the first time; Afro/Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, crikey, even Red Indians got a look in [not counting Elizabeth Warren], and there's never been any shortage of cowboys. There might have even been some Russians in there somewhere.

Then there's the curious idea of holding all the elections you could possibly think of every two years on the same day - the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

All 435 seats in The House were up for re-election [MHR's have two year terms, so they all know they are only really ever short-term part-time politicians], a third of the Senate went 'round again, then there were Gubernatorial races, elections for state legislatures, polls for judges, sheriffs, mayors, town councils, and voter propositions [read 'local referendums'] on all kinds of weird State issues. Like legalising weed in the Great State of Michigan; a proposal which got up by a wide margin 56%-44%. Out there you can now grow 12 pot plants and have 2.5 ounces of wacky tobaccy floating around the house without coming to the attention of the authorities. Yoo! Hoo!

But when all was said and done, in Congress there was an exact "flip" across the country, with the Dems winning precisely the same number of seats that the Grand Old Party lost. A two-party preferred Democracy if ever there was one. Let's not go to the contests for the US senate, which is the most unrepresentative of unrepresentative swills in all the free world.

The problem for the Yanks is that elections are run by the States along partisan lines, and all 50 of them do it differently, so the opportunities for disgraceful wholesale gerrymandering are legion and endless. To tackle the problem, the New York Times did an earnest editorial calling for the size of the House of Representatives to be bolstered to 593 seats, while Time magazine went much much further and proposed an astonishing 930 bums on seats in The House. Of course, all they have to do is establish an independent National Electoral Commission to do the "re-districting" along world's best practice lines and it's problem solved - right there - but that'd trample all over State's Rights, and would require an amendment to the Constitution, so that aint gonna happen. Or they could just adopt compulsory voting, but that would be dead against all the known precepts of The Land of The Free.

Much song and dance has been made about how the American electorate was so as mad as hell about The Donald that they went to the boxes in droves in an "historic turn-out" for the Mid-Terms to teach the low brown dog bastard scumbag a lesson in democracy. Really? OK, 100 million ballots were cast for the first time ever, however, the best estimate - and it can only ever be a best estimate even if you used an abacus and slide-rule - was that the average nationwide turn-out for the The House and Senate was about 48% of eligible voters. So, as usual, half the electorate couldn't be damned and/or give a blue root.

Same as it ever was:

Everyone knew, well before the election, that DJ Trump! was stuffed. Good & Proper. Losing the House means His Turdness will never get another penny in Federal money to do anything even mildly contentious. The Big Beautiful Wall along the Mexican border will never be built. Space Wars will never happen. The planet might implode, but nothing will happen. The Donald will be pulling out what's left of his outrageous bouffant and will be fully bald as well as suffering from meat sickness in two years time with complete & utter frustration and too many cheeseburgers & Cokes, as he is thwarted at every turn by a bitter Democratic Party consumed by rage and hatred and hell bent on revenge. United we stand, divided, we fall. Good luck America...see you later.

Meantime, back in The Most Unstable Democracy in the South Pacific, I heard the Tongue Speaker in Chief get himself completely tied in verbal knots when a local journo buttonholed him about his campaign bus, and how it could possibly keep up with him without breaking the long-standing world land speed record as he hitched a ride on aviation all over the vastness of Queensland. He wasn't campaigning or nuthin', just acquainting swinging voters with his now trademarked True Blue Fair Dinkum Ordinary Suburban Pie Eating Beer Swilling Baseball Cap Wearing Bogan Bloke Next Door image. In Tory circles it's known as "Project Sell Scomo", now that the fundamentalist fascists have disposed of that Poncy Prick from Point Piper as unelectable.

I knew that Scomo likes to introduce himself to folks he doesn't know as Scomo, but I had no idea that the Hon. Prime Minister is so taken by the contraction of his own name, that he now signs his moniker on all official documents, autograph hunter's books and campaign buses as Scomo.

Of course, nothing will ever beat the now-disgraced dodgy Chinese donation trouserer, the former Hon. Sen. Sam Dastyari's absolute corker of a Pinko Bus on the campaign trail back in '16.