OBAMA WINS
I was just thinking – It was an amazing night. The fears of 2000/2004 returned. How were states really going to go? Was Georgia really in play? Where’s Florida? Were those machines fixed? It had been hours and Virginia seems to be using a crayon and stone tablet to add up their vote totals.
Pennsylvania was the first big swing state that clearly went for Obama. For weeks, the talking heads were trying to make this close (this particular state and really the whole race) but it wasn’t. It never was. This race hadn’t been close for over a month yet the talking heads were going on and on about John McCain’s surge in the polls. NOT! There was no significant surge. For reasons that were unclear to me, McCain threw time and money into Pennsylvania in the last three or four weeks. Why? None of the poll numbers hinted that Pennsylvania was close. Some polls had McCain down by 10 points, yet he and Sarah Palin were out there (and don’t forget the implied presence of Joe the Plumber). The final vote total revealed no surprises in Pennsylvania. Obama won there by 11 points.
About an hour later, Ohio went for Obama. I found it peculiar that there was so little talk about Ohio. The talking heads didn’t go on and on over Ohio…why? Ohio was really interesting with 2004 as a backdrop. The conservative Cincinnati vs. the liberal Cleveland. There was so much to talk about that would have been interesting and informative but we got almost nothing. Then the real waiting had begun.
My question for all of you is – When did John McCain know that this race was over? When did he know that he lost to Bush for the third time? We all know that John McCain lost to Bush in 2000. I think that you can say that McCain wanted to run in 2004 but it wasn’t politically possible. So he lost again in 2004. Now with his being so unpopular, President Bush dragged McCain and other Republicans down in this election. Elizabeth Dole is a great example. She really didn’t do anything wrong. Incumbents usually lose for screwing up…not merely for being worthless. If Bush would have gotten his approval numbers into the low 40s, he could have helped McCain. In the end, John McCain lost not only to Barack Obama but also to George W. Bush, again.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, just before 10 pm EST Barack Obama had passed the magic number. He was sitting at just over 200 electoral votes and California, Oregon, Washington State and Hawaii were clearly his but not counted yet because those polls hadn’t closed. The writing was on the wall. The game was over. The fat lady was singing. Elvis had left the building. It didn’t matter how Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri and Montana went. Barack Obama didn’t need them for victory but he did need them for a mandate.
Tonight, Barack Obama received a mandate from the American people. There are still a few races which are too close to call (Al Franken in Minnesota) and a couple of states that remain too close to call (Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina). America, with our young and old, our rich and our poor, our black, white, and brown party, WON TONIGHT. We needed to wake up and begin to figure out how to change this country that we love.
