Sunday, November 09, 2008

Obama and the 46.4% Problem

My early prediction for the US election was McCain over Obama in a squeaker. Possibly closer than the 2000 election. Why? I did not feel that a significant portion of Americans could get over Obama's 'uniqueness' to cast a vote for him. I mean, he was different from any previous president. His name was strange, unAmerican even. Uhh, alright already. Enough whites would not vote for him because he is not white.
But they did. Why? Enough Americans, especially white Americans, realized that their country was in dire straits. You name it, its a disaster:economy, deficit, two wars, environment, education system, justice system, competent government, constitutional freedoms, foreign relations, etc.
The Bush/Cheney/Republican managed to screw up everything they touched in eight years. Now, the electorate had a look at who they were going to trust to get them out of this horrendous mess and by the landslide margin of six per cent of the voting population chose Obama.
Think about that for a second or a minute. After a disastrously incompetent campaign [I hope I don't have to list all the blunders here] with a national joke for a VP, defending the worst President in US history, and including some of the most poorly timed news events possible, McCain still received 46.4% of the popular vote. FORTY-SIX POINT FOUR PER CENT!
And this while running against a candidate who may be one of the finest speakers in presidential history, running a very well organized, very well financed, relatively fault free campaign. Who is also the leader of the 'majority' party. Who also received a huge number of high level endorsements from all across the political spectrum including numerous Republicans. Still FORTY-SIX POINT FOUR PER CENT of Americans decided the old, crooked, lying, angry, Republican, dumb white guy who championed the same policies that got them into the two wars and financial crisis was the right guy to lead the country out of this mess.

If that doesn't scare the hell out of all Americans [and the world] , it should.

Enough Americans put aside their fears and prejudices to give their country a chance. I hope Americans, especially Democrats, don't become complacent and think that everything has changed. They have a lot of work ahead of them to defeat the forces of ignorance, who unfortunately will be heard from very shortly [2010 if not sooner].

Best wishes to Barack Obama and the people of the United States.

3 comments:

Capt. Fogg said...

The voices of ignorance yes - and we will all have to deal with the downward momentum of the Bush snowball which is turning into an avalanche.

Even still, as the world slowly implodes, they're nattering about Gay marriage and Marxism.

A Voice from Left Field said...

Thanks for commenting. I guess we all just have to believe that...
this too shall pass.

The one part of this that bothers me the most is that there is a large minority [confined to the US] who still think that Dubya is a hero and wise leader.
Now thats scary.

opit said...

That minority is overstated.
I won't reveal how badly I think figures skewed until you have a chance to examine the radical ideas listed at Wikipedia - found in comments on your next article.
Meantime ; http://www.bradblog.com/ has years of revelations of systematic monkeying with the electoral process.