CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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A Few Words on the Re-Election of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

this entry brought to you by queens of the stone age, "sick, sick, sick"


I was worried. Of course I was worried. Poll after poll and the up-to-the-minute information always showed Obama ahead by a margin electorally. I think in the pit of my stomach, in the very depths, I trust people. The problem is that all the layers on top of that pit vary from "uncertain" to "downright cynical" about people around me, and the fact that the Republicans were so obviously trying to steal this election-- I don't need to get into it because everything worked out okay, but even if you were half paying attention, this much was obvious-- made me nervous. And further cementing the outer layers of my stomach was that in the last few weeks, the polls kept showing Romney ahead in the popular vote, with Obama still in a very firm lead electorally.

I hated this idea. It disturbed me. For one thing, I hate the electoral college, and I've railed against it a lot. And even if it was the only reason we got a second Obama Presidency, that didn't make it right, that didn't mean it wasn't nonsense just because it happened to turn out the way I wanted it to.

When they officially called it, Romney was ahead in the popular vote, which upset me, although I knew that the voting on the west coast wasn't totally counted. But by the time I got back from work and the votes were finalized, Obama was ahead by over three million votes. Certainly not as thorough of a drubbing as Reagan V. Mondale, but far enough ahead of Romney that there could be no contention.

I've said it before, I think Mitt Romney is a bad person, and I would have never voted for him in a million years. But it is interesting to me that when this election cycle started, and the Republican primary voters kept giving literally every single candidate a moment at being the number one favored, as the GOP pretended they liked Michelle Bachmann for a week, Rick Perry for a few weeks, Rick Santorum for a week, Herman Cain even had a moment where he was on top, people on the left kept saying "Could you just stop acting like you're actually serious about anyone other than Mitt Romney? Romney is the best choice, and has the best chance at beating Obama."

Of course, before we learned a lot about Romney, he seemed like a decent candidate, and not a complete soulless sociopathic douchebag. But he would have been all those things regardless. What was baffling was watching Mitt Romney and the GOP cow tow to the Tea Party, who is genuinely ruining this country.

It's not as if you couldn't predict he would do this, but what was so mind-boggling about it was watching Romney, painted into a corner, completely unable to run on his own record. Because the GOP's priority from day one was to make Obama a one-term President, and they decided the best way to do this was to pretend that everything that came out of his mouth was evil incarnate and venomously socialist, even if what he was saying was originally a Republican idea. Romney wasn't allowed to run on what was actually appealing about him in the first place.

Romney should have come out and said "Obama basically took his entire Health Care plan from me-- but he wanted socialism, and because of me, and because of the Republican party making sure he didn't, he got something more sensible, something that I gave you. You're welcome. If I'm elected, I promise, on day one, to change all the things about Obamacare that don't work, and instead give you the real deal, Romneycare, instead of the watered-down version he gave you."

Now, Lefties like myself would have called foul, but at least we'd be arguing on the same level, and he actually wouldn't have been completely full of shit. Instead he was forced to nervously shift his eyes and argue semantic bullshit about how his tax was constitutional because it was state wide, but basically the exact same program was unconstitutional on a Federal basis. Instead he was forced to promise the Tea Partiers the nonsense that he would overturn Obamacare on day one, which would have benefited no one and is not actually a plan to help people with spiraling health care costs.

But I think the big take-away from the Presidential Election of 2012 is that money doesn't buy everything, and that sometimes people can see through it. Because of Citizens United, this was by far the most expensive election ever, and, because of Citizens United, the Republicans outspent the Democrats by like, 3 billion to one, right? That was the number, wasn't it?

The Republicans did everything in their power to win-- piles and piles of money, idiotic voter suppression, funny mechanized voting, and yet Obama still came out a stunning 100 points ahead electorally, and a solid 3 million votes ahead in the popular vote. It really isn't more decisive than that, and somehow we all pulled through despite all that. It is nice to know that money doesn't control everything.

At least, not yet.


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with love from CRS @ 10:32 AM 

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