In advance of watching the latest Ruckus, we guessed (correctly) that, for the majority of the Ruckettes, the show would sound like a counseling session for grieving Democrats. But our real question was - how would they deal with it? Anger? Sadness?
To understand the Ruckettes, we recruited the help of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss psychiatrist who came up with the Kübler-Ross model, more commonly known as the five stages of grief.
Keep in mind that there were a lot of elections - some of them easier to swallow than others - and so every Ruckette was all over the charts depending on which election we're talking about. Here are our highlights from the five stages:
Denial - Mary's claim that there were 'lots of reasons' why Democrat vote was repressed for Cleaver: contrast this with her past statements about how beloved Cleaver was and how Turk's single digit poll was bogus - she called this election incorrectly, and still can't get her head around it.
Anger - The prime example was Gwen's claim that the quality of candidates didn't matter in this campaign. But if we're measuring anger in terms of sheer output, Mary won out; her complaints about people talking about Stephene Moore's policy positions (how dare they!) and Rex Sinquefield had a lot of acid in them.
Bargaining - The Ruckettes made various attempts to downplay these elections, but the best example we came up with is Yael trying to come up with two examples where fiscal conservatives won't vote to reduce spending, which doesn't really constitute an argument.
Depression - Mary and Gwen's sad admissions that Barack Obama needs to pivot and start cooperating with Republicans takes the cake.
Acceptance - Call it acceptance or throwing your colleagues under the bus, but Gwen argues correctly that Carnahan ran a vapid and unemotional campaign. Yael also concludes with a bit of acceptance, saying that "we get the government we deserve" (even if he meant it in a trite fashion).
If we had to give props to one Ruckette this week, it would have to be Gwen. Maybe the psychological trauma of having been transported thirty years in time from the disco era gives her more resiliency than what we saw of Mary's delicate sensibilities, but Gwen definitely seemed to be furthest along the path to recovery.
The Ruckettes were so busy managing their emotional turmoil that they only managed to get 16 shots in (with no bingo's), a new worst for the show, and far below the 20.54 shot average.
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