The percent chance of John McCain beating Barack Obama in the presidential election was 1.1 percent in the Sportsbook on Tuesday and even that may have been generous.
It wasn’t a matter of if he was going to lose; it was just going to be by how much. There was talk in some circles that the polls leading up were either a lot closer than they were or being manipulated by certain media outlets in order to inflate Obama’s advantage.
At the end of the day, he was the winner. Jubilation came from his supporters around the United States and throughout the world. I saw tears in eyes and emotion flowing from spectators that found their way down to Grant Park in Chicago to watch this historic moment in our nation’s history.
Obama got us to the podium and began to make his victory speech. He continued to speak the same themes of “hope” and “change” that he was been uttering for the last 20 months. As he continued to speak, he spoke about all of us coming together as a people to regain our great standing in the world that has taken a hit over the last several years.
This was great to hear. One would be able to understand how he could inspire someone to believe that “status quo” is not good enough and that their individual and as a whole, our collective potential is limitless.
Seems like an ingenious idea, doesn’t it?
However, as I began to dissect the analysis of talking heads and regular Americans (or, as Sarah Palin would refer to them, “Joe Six-Packs”) who were being interviewed, the words I then began to hear to struck me as somewhat odd. To this person’s ears, it was almost as if to suggest that has Obama lost, that the country was somehow “unfulfilling its promise” or going “backward” as he was saying in his victory speech.
It left me with the impression that the only way that things would be right with the world is if he won and nothing else would be considered either acceptable or in some other way “damaging”.
Obama received over 62 million votes, the most a candidate had ever received in an election. But McCain did receive over 56 million votes, the second highest for a candidate in the history of an election. That leads me to wonder how many people truly believed that “change’ was needed. Its beyond obvious based on those results that many people seem to agree that there are two different visions of the world.
If they did not, then why was the margin of victory just six percentage points?
If there were a full mandate for “change”, wouldn’t McCain have simply taken a bigger ass kicking than he did? Of course, in elections of this magnitude, five percentage points is the equivalent of a blowout. The Electoral College showed the contest was a rout, but the overall popular vote difference was not all that great when you consider we are working with nearly 120 million total votes.
Like the old teeter-totter we used to ride when we were child, the country is pretty weighed evenly, occasionally leaning to one or another in any given year.
Make no mistake: This is still a divided country. Look at the electoral map and you’ll see that with the exception for two or three states, it is still a “Red state vs. Blue State” country. The people in the Northeast, upper Midwest and West Coast voted for Obama. Those in the middle on the country to down South voted for McCain.
The “Blue States” still view the “Red States” as bitter, hick town people that impregnable to change, while the Red still looks at the Blue as elitists who do not want to change what their moral and ethical values are.
I would like to think that we as an American public are not stupid despite the mounting evidence that a sizable percentage of us may be. All I have to do is listen to some of my fellow peers talking about this election over the past 20 months to draw this conclusion. It was brutally obvious that many voters played a game of “Connect the Dots”. McCain was used as a figurehead to resemble the abject failures of the second Bush presidency, which the Obama campaign used repeatedly, emphatically and completely to perfection.
BEFORE WE CONTINUE – A lot of talk has been made about the eight years of Bush failure. This may be true in the final analysis, but if his presidency was such a royal fuck up, then why did he win the 2004 election with over 50% of the voting public? When a candidate can get a clear majority that means they approve of his job no matter who the opposition is. If this weren’t the case, he would have been ousted in the year. It’s not a matter of the people not voting for him being smart and the people that reelected him being stupid. Look at Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as an example.
Admittedly, I voted for McCain when I went into the booth. This didn’t mean that I completely supported his cause 100 percent because I did not. This also didn’t mean I was against Obama. In my analysis, I agreed with some of the positions of each of them. I was undecided and stayed that way up until Election Day.
My theory is very simple: A President has a 50-50 chance of being successful. No more, no less. Events that take place change everything. Would Al Gore of handled 9-11 better than Bush? No one really knows. The situation was the most unique in history. Personally, being in New York when it happened, I thought he did a very good job handling one of our greatest crises/tragedies. Every person is different and this argument over who would be better should not be limited to which political party the person is affiliated with.
I have no affiliation with any political party, choose not to and do not plan to do so in the future. When lining up issue-for-issue, my thoughts and ideas were slightly more to McCain’s side than they were to Obama.
Does this make me a bad, evil or unintelligent person?
No.
56 million other people like me felt the exact same way. Does that make them bad, evil and unintelligent too?
No.
This is what we call debate. Just because a person is not supportive of your beliefs or candidate doesn’t make them wrong or you correct. For whatever reason, there are people on both sides of the aisle who truly feel this way.
I find this alarming.
Did I make my views public before the election? Not always. My circle of friends is a liberal group. This is fine because most people in my age bracket are. Besides, I have always liked out people that have different viewpoints than my own.
We debate back and forth and in the end, give each other a fist pump, hug or knock down a drink knowing that we can at least understand each other’s thinking.
It’s healthy.
They would try to recruit me to their side and I would refuse. My sister, who for the last two years worked with the Obama campaign, gave me the talking points. I listened and took them for what it was.
It wasn’t a matter of if he was going to lose; it was just going to be by how much. There was talk in some circles that the polls leading up were either a lot closer than they were or being manipulated by certain media outlets in order to inflate Obama’s advantage.
At the end of the day, he was the winner. Jubilation came from his supporters around the United States and throughout the world. I saw tears in eyes and emotion flowing from spectators that found their way down to Grant Park in Chicago to watch this historic moment in our nation’s history.
Obama got us to the podium and began to make his victory speech. He continued to speak the same themes of “hope” and “change” that he was been uttering for the last 20 months. As he continued to speak, he spoke about all of us coming together as a people to regain our great standing in the world that has taken a hit over the last several years.
This was great to hear. One would be able to understand how he could inspire someone to believe that “status quo” is not good enough and that their individual and as a whole, our collective potential is limitless.
Seems like an ingenious idea, doesn’t it?
However, as I began to dissect the analysis of talking heads and regular Americans (or, as Sarah Palin would refer to them, “Joe Six-Packs”) who were being interviewed, the words I then began to hear to struck me as somewhat odd. To this person’s ears, it was almost as if to suggest that has Obama lost, that the country was somehow “unfulfilling its promise” or going “backward” as he was saying in his victory speech.
It left me with the impression that the only way that things would be right with the world is if he won and nothing else would be considered either acceptable or in some other way “damaging”.
Obama received over 62 million votes, the most a candidate had ever received in an election. But McCain did receive over 56 million votes, the second highest for a candidate in the history of an election. That leads me to wonder how many people truly believed that “change’ was needed. Its beyond obvious based on those results that many people seem to agree that there are two different visions of the world.
If they did not, then why was the margin of victory just six percentage points?
If there were a full mandate for “change”, wouldn’t McCain have simply taken a bigger ass kicking than he did? Of course, in elections of this magnitude, five percentage points is the equivalent of a blowout. The Electoral College showed the contest was a rout, but the overall popular vote difference was not all that great when you consider we are working with nearly 120 million total votes.
Like the old teeter-totter we used to ride when we were child, the country is pretty weighed evenly, occasionally leaning to one or another in any given year.
Make no mistake: This is still a divided country. Look at the electoral map and you’ll see that with the exception for two or three states, it is still a “Red state vs. Blue State” country. The people in the Northeast, upper Midwest and West Coast voted for Obama. Those in the middle on the country to down South voted for McCain.
The “Blue States” still view the “Red States” as bitter, hick town people that impregnable to change, while the Red still looks at the Blue as elitists who do not want to change what their moral and ethical values are.
I would like to think that we as an American public are not stupid despite the mounting evidence that a sizable percentage of us may be. All I have to do is listen to some of my fellow peers talking about this election over the past 20 months to draw this conclusion. It was brutally obvious that many voters played a game of “Connect the Dots”. McCain was used as a figurehead to resemble the abject failures of the second Bush presidency, which the Obama campaign used repeatedly, emphatically and completely to perfection.
BEFORE WE CONTINUE – A lot of talk has been made about the eight years of Bush failure. This may be true in the final analysis, but if his presidency was such a royal fuck up, then why did he win the 2004 election with over 50% of the voting public? When a candidate can get a clear majority that means they approve of his job no matter who the opposition is. If this weren’t the case, he would have been ousted in the year. It’s not a matter of the people not voting for him being smart and the people that reelected him being stupid. Look at Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as an example.
Admittedly, I voted for McCain when I went into the booth. This didn’t mean that I completely supported his cause 100 percent because I did not. This also didn’t mean I was against Obama. In my analysis, I agreed with some of the positions of each of them. I was undecided and stayed that way up until Election Day.
My theory is very simple: A President has a 50-50 chance of being successful. No more, no less. Events that take place change everything. Would Al Gore of handled 9-11 better than Bush? No one really knows. The situation was the most unique in history. Personally, being in New York when it happened, I thought he did a very good job handling one of our greatest crises/tragedies. Every person is different and this argument over who would be better should not be limited to which political party the person is affiliated with.
I have no affiliation with any political party, choose not to and do not plan to do so in the future. When lining up issue-for-issue, my thoughts and ideas were slightly more to McCain’s side than they were to Obama.
Does this make me a bad, evil or unintelligent person?
No.
56 million other people like me felt the exact same way. Does that make them bad, evil and unintelligent too?
No.
This is what we call debate. Just because a person is not supportive of your beliefs or candidate doesn’t make them wrong or you correct. For whatever reason, there are people on both sides of the aisle who truly feel this way.
I find this alarming.
Did I make my views public before the election? Not always. My circle of friends is a liberal group. This is fine because most people in my age bracket are. Besides, I have always liked out people that have different viewpoints than my own.
We debate back and forth and in the end, give each other a fist pump, hug or knock down a drink knowing that we can at least understand each other’s thinking.
It’s healthy.
They would try to recruit me to their side and I would refuse. My sister, who for the last two years worked with the Obama campaign, gave me the talking points. I listened and took them for what it was.
However, there are some political friends that I have where it appeared that because I wasn’t supporting their candidate, there was somehow something wrong with me. Bill Maher had a very similar take when he described the voted that were undecided as “morons”. In his mind (and others), not choosing Obama labeled you as an idiot and not choosing either landed you into another form of weird.
Here’s a newsflash for those people: Neither of these political parties are any good!
The idea that one side is better than the other is ridiculous. If you truly believe that, your sugar high from drinking all the Kool-Aid may land you in a nearby hospital.
Unbelievably, there are many on both sides of the spectrum that try to make their appeal that one party is someone superior to the other.
Why is this? I am still not sure.
Both of these clown outfits masquerading as political parties have made gobbles of money on the backs of us the American people by scamming us and then asking for more money each and every year. Either some people are just blind to the scam, simply do not care, or are just plain idiots. .
You don’t believe that? Ask yourself this question:
Why over the last 20 years the city, state and federal government has asked for (and received) more and more of our hard earned money and has continued to waste it on their own personal interests to the point where most of these cities are hard strung for money, or bankrupt.
Government used to do a better job with less. Now, it has more revenue than ever, and is beyond incompetent. And you know what? They now need MORE of our money to fix the problems they’ve created.
Where is the accountability for that? This is not a one sided issue. It’s a Democrat AND Republican problem. Neither side can escape the blame. Yet few partisans on either side will ever admit fault. It’s like they are Teflon.
When I hear people say, “We just have to pick the lesser of two evils,” it makes the little hair on my head perk up. Is that what we have come down to? You mean to tell me that we are incapable of expecting more from the people in government office that WE as a people select. I’m sorry; I don’t buy that for a second.
It's like my dad told me on the week of the election:
“Both guys are running the scam. It’s just a matter of which scam you believe more.”
We had one candidate (McCain) talk about buying up bad mortgages with money that doesn’t exist right now because of the tanking economy.
Huh?
He then talked about allowing you to pick your health care provider buy giving you a health credit. Never once did he mention how he was going to “create” jobs or boost up the people that are currently struggling now.
On the other side, we had another candidate (Obama) talk about giving 95% of working families a “tax cut” (which isn’t really a cut) by ripping the money from the people that have more income.
Huh?
People actually bought into this stuff. Just the mere thought of a person getting $500 or $1,000 was enough to make them go “gaga”. The idea that “Big Oil” and “Big Companies” were finally going to “pay their share” was enough to rally the troops like a football coach giving a motivational speech in an effort to fire his team up before a big game.
A NOTE ON THIS “TAX CUT”- (This is a main reason why President-elect Obama and I disagreed and led me to vote to McCain.)
Be aware that your taxes are not going to be “cut” in any way. Take what your currently yearly salary is right now and find out what percentage of that amount translates to your yearly income. For instance, if you make $50,000, you are set to get a “cut” in the amount of a check for $500. What percentage of your income is that? One percent! Apparently, a three or five percent reduction was a little too much for some people to get back because the government still needs more money to waste. What it amounts to is a cortisone shot that does not work long term.
And since that money is being taken from people of a higher income bracket to pay for it, do people realistically think that those people are simply going to let that happen and be fine with it?
That IS a redistribution of wealth.
Sure, a portion of wealthy people will accept paying what the new rate will be. But others will find alternative means to recoup newly lost money. You think “Big Oil” is simply going to give up all this money without increasing the price of fuel?
How does that have a trickling effect?
Don’t be surprised if the price of an airline ticket goes up. Other goods and services you have now will go up as businesses try to guarantee profits at any cost. Companies, in an effort to do the same will either cut jobs to trim payroll, or simply replace them with temporary workers where they can get the same production at a far less cost. Eventually, your “tax cut” will be redirected right back into the hands that it’s going to be taken away from.
You may not realize it now, but give it time. Like the old saying goes, “The house always wins.”
McCain was never able to articulate his vision for America in the world that we live in dominated by economic trouble led him to defeat. Obama was clear, concise and made no bones about what he was going to do. People listened, they believed and they made him President.
Now comes the idea of how all of us go forward. I laughed out loud when I heard people say that “now, we can come together as a nation”, apparently to suggest that if Obama lost, this couldn’t happen. I heard someone say, “Obama is MY President”, as if to say that had McCain won he wouldn’t be.
No one side has cornered the market on correct policy. If that were the case, one side would be winning all of the elections. There wouldn’t be a need to have a debate.
“I have some shit I’m conservative about. I have some shit that I’m liberal about”
Chris Rock
This pretty much describes me. I’m not a hack for a side, and though I will support President Obama as our leader, he will not get a free pass. On January 20, 2009, the time for speeches and words cease. No longer will that be a recipe for support and success. It will all be about results and nothing else.
If he cannot do that, it will make all of this celebration go for nothing. He will turn out and most believe (such as I) that he is nothing more than another politician, able to slick talk his way into office.
Good luck. Let’s get started.
Here’s a newsflash for those people: Neither of these political parties are any good!
The idea that one side is better than the other is ridiculous. If you truly believe that, your sugar high from drinking all the Kool-Aid may land you in a nearby hospital.
Unbelievably, there are many on both sides of the spectrum that try to make their appeal that one party is someone superior to the other.
Why is this? I am still not sure.
Both of these clown outfits masquerading as political parties have made gobbles of money on the backs of us the American people by scamming us and then asking for more money each and every year. Either some people are just blind to the scam, simply do not care, or are just plain idiots. .
You don’t believe that? Ask yourself this question:
Why over the last 20 years the city, state and federal government has asked for (and received) more and more of our hard earned money and has continued to waste it on their own personal interests to the point where most of these cities are hard strung for money, or bankrupt.
Government used to do a better job with less. Now, it has more revenue than ever, and is beyond incompetent. And you know what? They now need MORE of our money to fix the problems they’ve created.
Where is the accountability for that? This is not a one sided issue. It’s a Democrat AND Republican problem. Neither side can escape the blame. Yet few partisans on either side will ever admit fault. It’s like they are Teflon.
When I hear people say, “We just have to pick the lesser of two evils,” it makes the little hair on my head perk up. Is that what we have come down to? You mean to tell me that we are incapable of expecting more from the people in government office that WE as a people select. I’m sorry; I don’t buy that for a second.
It's like my dad told me on the week of the election:
“Both guys are running the scam. It’s just a matter of which scam you believe more.”
We had one candidate (McCain) talk about buying up bad mortgages with money that doesn’t exist right now because of the tanking economy.
Huh?
He then talked about allowing you to pick your health care provider buy giving you a health credit. Never once did he mention how he was going to “create” jobs or boost up the people that are currently struggling now.
On the other side, we had another candidate (Obama) talk about giving 95% of working families a “tax cut” (which isn’t really a cut) by ripping the money from the people that have more income.
Huh?
People actually bought into this stuff. Just the mere thought of a person getting $500 or $1,000 was enough to make them go “gaga”. The idea that “Big Oil” and “Big Companies” were finally going to “pay their share” was enough to rally the troops like a football coach giving a motivational speech in an effort to fire his team up before a big game.
A NOTE ON THIS “TAX CUT”- (This is a main reason why President-elect Obama and I disagreed and led me to vote to McCain.)
Be aware that your taxes are not going to be “cut” in any way. Take what your currently yearly salary is right now and find out what percentage of that amount translates to your yearly income. For instance, if you make $50,000, you are set to get a “cut” in the amount of a check for $500. What percentage of your income is that? One percent! Apparently, a three or five percent reduction was a little too much for some people to get back because the government still needs more money to waste. What it amounts to is a cortisone shot that does not work long term.
And since that money is being taken from people of a higher income bracket to pay for it, do people realistically think that those people are simply going to let that happen and be fine with it?
That IS a redistribution of wealth.
Sure, a portion of wealthy people will accept paying what the new rate will be. But others will find alternative means to recoup newly lost money. You think “Big Oil” is simply going to give up all this money without increasing the price of fuel?
How does that have a trickling effect?
Don’t be surprised if the price of an airline ticket goes up. Other goods and services you have now will go up as businesses try to guarantee profits at any cost. Companies, in an effort to do the same will either cut jobs to trim payroll, or simply replace them with temporary workers where they can get the same production at a far less cost. Eventually, your “tax cut” will be redirected right back into the hands that it’s going to be taken away from.
You may not realize it now, but give it time. Like the old saying goes, “The house always wins.”
McCain was never able to articulate his vision for America in the world that we live in dominated by economic trouble led him to defeat. Obama was clear, concise and made no bones about what he was going to do. People listened, they believed and they made him President.
Now comes the idea of how all of us go forward. I laughed out loud when I heard people say that “now, we can come together as a nation”, apparently to suggest that if Obama lost, this couldn’t happen. I heard someone say, “Obama is MY President”, as if to say that had McCain won he wouldn’t be.
No one side has cornered the market on correct policy. If that were the case, one side would be winning all of the elections. There wouldn’t be a need to have a debate.
“I have some shit I’m conservative about. I have some shit that I’m liberal about”
Chris Rock
This pretty much describes me. I’m not a hack for a side, and though I will support President Obama as our leader, he will not get a free pass. On January 20, 2009, the time for speeches and words cease. No longer will that be a recipe for support and success. It will all be about results and nothing else.
If he cannot do that, it will make all of this celebration go for nothing. He will turn out and most believe (such as I) that he is nothing more than another politician, able to slick talk his way into office.
Good luck. Let’s get started.
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