the rix mix

A year ago it seemed the most necessary but most unlikely of outcomes: A Democratic presidential win so large & broad that it could not be stolen or its meaning denied. It had to be a national repudiation of Bush/Cheney. No matter who the Republicans put up as their candidate.

Barack Obama did it.

Three of the four previous elections gave us presidents with less than 50% of the popular vote. After 2004 I feared for the future of national elections in America. A coalition of radicals had set a trap for the Democratic Party, & Democrats had walked into it. A red state / blue state trap, a divide & conquer split of the American electorate. They had constructed an electoral strategy that they hoped would guarantee a permanent Republican White House. It was a strategy that wrote off huge sections of America as electorally inconsequential, & that reduced presidential elections to a few battleground states they could steal if they couldn't win them legitimately.

With the help of the Bush/Cheney administration, which failed in so many ways that it could not anoint a successor, Barack Obama & the American people turned back that terrible scenario.

Obama carried Florida & Ohio. He would have won without them.

Obama won Virginia. He won Iowa & Indiana. He decisively won New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada. Amazingly, he'll probably take North Carolina, & the horrid Liddy Dole was defeated, a one term nightmare. He rolled across Pennsylvania & New Hampshire. John Sununu is gone. He may yet carry Missouri. He ran close in Montana. He had respectable percentages in many states that will always be red on the map.

Obama will have a popular vote majority of about 7 million.

It is not a landslide. It didn't need to be that kind of victory. What Obama accomplished was more important: He changed the electoral map. He promised change, & he delivered change on Election Day. He turned states blue that Republicans had dreamed of owning forever. Yes, some of those states will be red again. But to win some of them back, Republicans will have to change.

Barack Obama is multiracial man with dark skin. That is the greatest change of all. This may be the most admirable of all our presidential elections.

This election was not stolen or manipulated. It was fully legitimate. If you feel bitter in defeat, place the blame where it belongs: Not on John McCain, who probably never had a chance & in any case was forced out of his best game, but on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld; on the discredited, shameful, now defeated congressional leadership of avaricious men like Tom DeLay; on the neocon ideologues & religious fanatics; on the corporate thieves & K Street lobbyists. They took the Grand Old Party & broke it. They did more than divide America: they sliced & diced us, raised up demons old & new. They appealed to the worst in America. They even trashed the legacy given them by Ronald Reagan.

Obama won not by dividing America with fear, but by appealing to American unity & moderation. In a bleak time he offers a hopeful vision. He turned away attempts to divide him into his parts & make him less than a whole person. His ability to remain an integral human being throughout the campaign is evidence of his good character, mirroring what we want to believe about America. He convinced a majority of voters that unity & hope are not radical messages. Obama is an expression of our better angels.

I learn that this body is composed of a majority of gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in the choice of a Chief Magistrate, did not think I was the man. I understand, nevertheless, that they came forward here to greet me as the constitutional President of the United States -- as citizens of the United States, to meet the man who, for the time being, is the representative man of the nation, united by a purpose to perpetuate the Union and liberties of the people. As such, I accept this reception more gratefully than I could do did I believe it was tendered to me as an individual.
President-elect Abraham Lincoln, Address to The New Jersey State Senate, February 21, 1861

The new President-elect is bringing that spirit with him. Like Lincoln he is a smart but not cynical politician from Illinois. He thinks for himself. He is no one's puppet. He will choose his counselors well. He will govern from as near the center as he feels necessary. We don't know if Barack Obama will be what we hope for him & for ourselves. But today we are a very fortunate nation.

Labels: THE election