Election Observations

I’m still thinking this election was The Seinfeld Show of elections.  It was, at its core, an election about nothing.  The larger issues of our day were not addressed by either party or either candidate.  There are some things I did observe.

First, Nate Silver of the New York Times had the most insight into the election of anyone.  Silver used polling data that he viewed as reliable and was a fearless numbers cruncher.  He based his conclusions on facts as opposed to ideology and he was right.  So many pundits were off because they were seeing what they wanted to see as opposed to what was really there.  Silver followed the rule of Grissom, “Follow the evidence.”

Mitt Romney, but even more especially, Ann Romney looked defeated and exhausted Tuesday night.  An election makes a person move at 100 MPH for months and at the end it’s an even faster and more frantic pace.  People run on pure adrenalin for a long time, but when it’s over, it’s over.   And when you lose, it’s really over and positively crushing.

A staggering number of people still do not believe President Obama was born in the United States and that he is a Muslim.  He was, and he’s not.  To believe otherwise is simply ignorant.  Seriously, it is ignorant.  You may disagree with the man all you want, but don’t be a fool.

An obscene amount of money was spent on this election.  It was spent in different ways.  One campaign used much of it on commercials and the other used it on what the media calls, the ground game.  It turned out that the ground game was the better option----that an social media and direct marketing on the Internet.  Karl Rove who was so clever in running elections in the past was amazingly ineffective this time with his Super PAC.  Much has been made of Karl Rover’s ‘meltdown’ on Fox News.  It was a $300,000,000.00 breakdown and very much a reality that many people who invested in him will no longer do so.

The country is badly divided.  It has been badly divided for a long time and things have only gotten worse.  The divides are very much present between the rich and the poor; the urban and the rural; small town and suburbs; men and women; young and old; and, of course, racially.  We cannot overlook the racial divide in the country.  Stating this does not mean that I am even remotely suggesting that voting against President Obama was a racist thing to do.  Not even close.  There are, of course, people who voted racially on both sides, but racism is not the bigger factor here.  The bigger factor is very much evident in the remarks of a Republican strategist who said that the Republicans are viewing the nation of Mad Men and the Democrats are viewing the world of Modern Family. 

Here’s another thing.  The American population voted who they wanted in office.  This means that people chose, very deliberately, to have Barack Obama as the President and not Mitt Romney.  They chose the people they wanted in the Senate over the people they didn’t want; keeping it in the hands of the Democrats.  People also chose a majority of Republicans in the House.  We can say what we want about redistricting, etc., but these are the people who have been voted into office.  I also believe that people voted they way they did because they want a counterbalance between the two parties.  No one group owns the sandbox.  Everyone HAS to play together----which means the two parties HAVE to work together.  There are serious issues that have to be addressed and nothing can or will be solved with one party dictating to the other how it is going to be done.  We have to pray our leaders understand this and respect the will of the American people.

Finally, this.  Patriotism is not an idea of the Republicans or the Democrats.  It is an American ideal.