During last week’s midterm elections, the GOP handily took control of both houses of Congress and a majority of governorships, dealing the Democrats an embarrassing blow. But last night, the Dems bounced back in a big way: President Obama got retweeted by @midnight.
It just goes to show how quickly political fortunes can change. This simply speaks for itself:
While this morning it’s easy to gauge this as a unanimous Democratic victory, last night it was still up in the air. Posted at 12:08 a.m., shortly after the episode’s #HashtagWars segment, the tweet started strong, garnering eight retweets in the first five minutes and a fave from comedian Jim Norton. But still, there was initially no retweet from @midnight. Anything less would have meant further embarrassment for Democrats.
“The @midnight team usually retweets people during the show, so when Chris [Hardwick] announced the closing FTW segment, we were worried that the tweet wouldn’t get the bump,” read a White House statement released this morning. “But as we all know now, @midnight has spoken. This is a major victory for the party.”
“President Obama would also like to congratulate Kyle Kinane, the winner of last night’s @midnight, who had the commander-in-chief laughing the whole episode,” the statement went on to say.
Many political analysts said that they were impressed that Obama didn’t fall into the trap of writing a more meta joke like tweeting “Cars 2”—a move that most agree would have come across as desperate.
Just 24 hours ago, most political commentators had the Democrats dead in the water. Now, Republicans are scrambling to control the damage as the tweet amasses more and more attention. As of the publication of this article, Obama’s tweet has over 85 retweets and 105 likes.
Although Republicans initially called the president’s tweet “obvious” and “business as usual,” within hours GOP chairman Reince Priebus gave a press conference conceding that it was indeed pretty clever. Priebus went on to say, however, that the Republican party would not stop fighting Obama’s policies and being a voice for hardworking Americans, no matter what the president tweets next.
