Finally, the election is over.
Run for the hills Bush, they’re commin’ for you. And don’t think you can hide in a cave, cause they’re gonna’ smoke you out.
Speaking of smoke, if you see any on the horizon it is bound to be Cheney in his undisclosed location burning any documents of the last 8 years he can find.
All joking aside, the Bush/Cheney reign of terror is almost over. On the one hand, I am relieved. On the other, I am disappointed that it took this long. Doubly disappointed that the country wanted to impeach Clinton for lying about sex but didn’t touch Bush for starting 2 wars, lying to us about WMD’s, Katrina, $11T in debt, etc.
Speeches
I was impressed and touched by McCain’s speech. He is not perfect but I always like the Good McCain even as I disliked the Evil McCain that appeared after he lost in 2000. His choice of words was archaic which caught my attention. He was extremely gracious about Obama and talked a lot about supporting him because it was good for the country. He praised Obama’s achievement of being the first black President. He gave thanks for being allowed to run and for the blessings of his life. Im not sure I’ve heard any politician be so thankful for his life, especially one that just lost an election. Commentators said it was the old McCain talking. He seemed very presidential.
In contrast, Obama’s speech was a letdown. While McCain seemed almost happy to have lost, Obama seemed somber and flat. He had the rockstar crowd there but his actual speech didn’t do much for me and I have been trying to figure out why.
Much of the speech seemed to be paraphrased Martin Luther King and that bothered me. I was never and Obama fan but I voted for him because voting for the Republican party after the past 8 years would be criminal. I think Obama’s speech troubled me because it had too many messages. He tried to blend the racial achievement and the “fix the mess that Bush wrought” agenda and the combination didn’t do much for me.
Did he win because he is black? Many people assured me that Obama wasn’t where he is because he is black; Jeraldine Ferraro lost her job for saying he was. The crowd photos last night and the media rhetoric that has followed were clearly about him being black. The first black President. On the one hand that is a great accomplishment and I can understand why African Americans are proud and emotional about it. But Im not black and the First Black President feels like a private achievement for the black community.
I didn’t vote for him because of his race. I don’t want to talk about race because race is not our most pressing problem. I don’t want to see too many racial victory laps because it implies that is why people voted for him. In a way, it also seems too personal; a private matter for one of our nation’s many minorities. Obama himself tried hard to avoid talking about race during the election and he was never a civil rights leader. Obama is an ideal person to talk about race but it brings up too many messy issues so they avoided it in the campaign just as I have avoided writing about it.
I think it is very sad that so many people in our country still hate their fellow citizens because of their race. I think it is shameful that people could listen to Colin Powell’s speech and discount it with the excuse that he only voted for Obama because he is black. Americans are way too hung up on issues of race (and sex) but I am fearful that issues of race will only complicate the next 4 years and take time away from larger problems that don’t reflect our skin color.
I voted for Obama because I am eager to see someone in our government get back to responsible stewardship of our country. I hope we move on to that quickly.
49/51
Obama won but it continues to trouble me that the nation is still so divided.
This was the election of “anybody but Bush”. Democrats AND Republicans ran on that same platform.
McCain was a maverick for decades before he tried to ingratiate himself with the new Republican base for the past 8 years. He was also so weak he barely made to the nomination. But as the country disintegrated, even the Republican party recognized they needed someone who wasn’t Bush and McCain’s stock rose. But McCain was always a weak candidate. As a Maverick he was never the heart of the party; always an outsider. He was never strong enough to take his party by the neck and shake it into something new. But even limping to the finish line, he might have won if the economy hadn’t melted down just before the election. Even as a twisted form of his former maverick self, he got half the public vote.
Political pundits are praising the accomplishment of Obama that he got 50% of the popular vote. To me that only means that more than half the country didn’t vote for him. It’s hard for me to see that as a mandate.
It astonishes me that the Republican party still exists after the last 8 years but they are still getting almost half the vote. The wars, the unwinding of government agencies, the financial meltdown, the $11T debt – Republicans don’t see themselves as having done anything wrong. Last week Newt Gingrinch said “We don’t have a free market if its only free market on the way up and socialism on the way down. What did these executives get millions of dollars in pay for it their companies need a tax-payer bailout?” and yet half the country is still voting Republican.
The election is finally over but we still seem very divided. A lot of people voted for "change" but it was never clear to me what exactly that change was. I feel fairly confident that we all wanted a different type of change and those differences will soon come to the fore.
If we want to see real change, Obama has to pull the Democratic party together behind a single vision and he has to get the Republican party to join in. The election is over and I find myself wondering if we will make any lasting progress if people still think of themselves first and half the country sees medicine as poison. To his credit, Obama did talk about the challenges ahead and how we need to pull together. I wonder how many of the people that need to listen will.
