A post mortem is something that’s dome after a death, so the title seemed appropriate. Well, my pared back expectations from last week were pared back some more by the interminable vote counting systems out West.  The electoral system roller coaster reached the top of the hill and hurtled down again, and what liked like a tolerable outcome went South, or was that West?  The Nevada Senate win became a loss, as they just kept finding more ballots in Clarke County.  Never saw that one before, right?  Then, in Arizona, they had to stop counting, shut off the video cameras, and wait for new ballots to be printed.  I guess Amazon finally delivered the printer toner that kept thousands of Arizonans from voting on election day.  But, nothing to see there.  Don’t want to be called an election denier.  As this is written, Republicans have reached 218 seats in the House, and will control that chamber.  I expected about 230 seats last week.  The final number now looks more like 222.  Somehow, there are California House districts where they still have been able to count only 60% of the votes.  How could this fiasco happen again after 2020?  H.L. Mencken once said, “The people get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”  Well, we got it.  And we got it because, apparently, elected officials are content to let business as usual continue to be business as usual.  And if any of you had doubts whether the Deep State actually exists, this mess finally has put all doubts to rest.  We managed to believe all the Red Wave bullshit, and you can’t blame us, because we don’t know any better.  The alleged professionals in our Party, however, either did know better, or are so criminally inept that they just stood there and watched it happen.  It’s a given that Democrats clean up on early and mail ballots.  I say ballots instead of votes because it appears that Republicans only count votes, while Democrats count ballots.  So we knew from experience that a complete imbecilic non-entity like John Fetterman would wake up on election day already some 750,000 votes ahead of his opponent.  What did we do about this known fact?  Nothing.  And don’t give me the “Republicans are just an election day get out the vote Party” bullshit.  Clearly, that doesn’t work, so how many times do you need to get screwed before you try something else?  I am first among those who don’t like or want no-reason mail ballots or early voting, but it’s here, courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party’s Wuhan virus, and we either adapt or we go the way of all the other dinosaurs.  And speaking of dinosaurs, what’s the fallout in the Republican Party after it got caught with its pants down again?  Mitch McConnell was reelected Senate Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy will be the new Speaker, and Ronna McDaniel (daughter of Mitt Romney –  is it any wonder we’re in the shape we’re in?) apparently will continue as the Chair of the Party.  This trio, sometimes known as “the Mc Leaders,” is as ineffective a bunch of alleged leaders as I’ve ever seen.  Of the three, McConnell is the worst.  Mitch McConnell had a large fund of campaign money to be doled out, supposedly where it would do the most good for Republicans.  But that’s a joke.  Mitch doles it out only to the candidates he knows will continue him in power.  And what power?  The Minority Leader.  McConnell had a great chance to become Majority Leader this year, but instead, we will continue with the Detestable Chuck Schumer in that role.  And Mitch is just fine with that.  Mitch badmouthed the Senate candidates in August, not because they weren’t good candidates, but because some of them would not vote for him as Leader.  Mitch could have pumped money into the Arizona race to help Blake Masters, and could have sent more money to Adam Laxalt in Nevada, but he didn’t.  Instead, Mitch sent money to Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.  Murkowski, for the second time in six years, failed to win her own primary, but Mitch wouldn’t support the Republican who did win, in a State where, no matter what, one of the Republicans was going to be elected.  Mitch withheld money from General Bolduc in New Hampshire, then teased him with some, and finally cut him off in the final weeks.  Now, Mitch and the other Mc Leaders are busy trying to stamp out all traces of Republican populism (a/k/a Trumpism – more about that next week).  The reason is simple to understand.  The Party is not designed to give the people what they want, it’s designed to foster the status quo, so that deserving political hacks, who never held, and don’t want a real job can line their pockets.  Sure, they’ll make all the right sounds before election day, but the reality is, it really doesn’t matter how the elections come out.  You’re going to get the the government that the elites say you deserve, and you’re going to get it good and hard.  You may think the disaster at the border, fuel costs, inflation, and national security are important, but they don’t.  They’ve shown us what they think is important.  This week Republicans in the Senate joined Democrats to pass a bill protecting same-sex marriage, as unneeded and irrelevant a piece of legislation as there possibly can be.  Like it or not, The Supreme Court ruled it a right six years ago, so what are they protecting?  If this is all we’re going to get from these Mc Screwups, then it’s time for them to go.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  These Mc bastards somehow manage to screw us all of the time.  They don’t oppose bad candidates, they oppose populists who will throw them out.  We better wake up.