Democrats lose presidential elections. It’s what they do best.

So, it only makes sense that, eventually, they would mistake losing for their ultimate goal, since it’s what they achieve best, and would aim to lose. Therefore, winning the election, because that’s the only way to lose when you plan to fail.

Republicans are, of course, losing their ever-loving minds. Like a trust fund kid being told he doesn’t need another Bentley, they’re freaking the shit out. How dare the country not give them what they want? They always get what they want.

Most likely, it’s the end of times. Barack Obama is a terrorist , straight out of an al-Qaida camp, who they cleverly outfitted into a suit and somehow managed to push him through the entire electoral process. Ha ha, suckers. Also, he’s a socialist, which of course means he’s a Nazi. No, wait, he’s a black radical. His dad was actually Malcolm X. He’s an angry Christian, just like his pastor and best friend, the Rev. Wright. Hold on, actually, his best friend is William Ayers, who is a domestic terrorist. Just like Obama, who is a secret Muslim domestic terrorist angry socialist Nazi antichrist.

He will destroy the world.

Liberals, of course, have no idea what it feels like to watch their beloved country go crazy and elect an unqualified, crazed nutjob into the highest office of the land, where he will push his lunatic fringe ideas into the new laws and policy of our country. Oh, wait …

Yeah, we do.

I can remember the horrible feeling that overcame me in 2000, when the networks declared Bush the winner past midnight on Election Day. I went to bed that night, thinking for sure that this was the end. Surely, this horrible man, now our president, would usher us into wars I disagreed with, push us nearly to the brink of destruction, let the terrorists in, allow natural disasters to destroy at least one major city in our country, drive our economy to ruin, socialize our financial system, stomp all over scientific advancement, turn neighbor against neighbor, try to privatize Social Security and triple the price of gas. Oh, and his vice president would likely shoot someone in the face.

Oh, how crazy I must have seemed. Good thing I didn’t spend the next eight years stewing about these paranoid delusions. It’s a reasonable world. Surely, our new president wouldn’t pull any of these crazy stunts. My political agenda was clouding my vision. I probably sounded just as crazy as all of the doomsayers on the right now sound like to me, with their own nutjob fears of President-elect Obama. All of the terrible predictions and nightmare scenarios the Republicans are now promising are just as unlikely to happen as all the predictions I made about Bush in 2000.

… Shit. Maybe I’d better find some kind of a fallout shelter.