A Few Last Thoughts Before The Election

A Few Last Thoughts Before The Election

There are only two days before the election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. By all the polls I have read, Barack Obama is leading by a comfortable margin. There appears to be a huge interest in this election and voter registration drives are making inroads to many segments of American society that have never felt any use in participating in our political process. If the last two presidential elections have taught us anything, it's that your vote matters. I really love this new trend of allowing people to vote early. It not only frees up the booths on election day but it gives citizens more opportunities to vote. Early voting is an even a better idea than declaring election day a national holiday.

Those who are opposed to voter registration drives, and other measures which give citizens the chance to let their voices be heard, are only demonstrating their total contempt for democracy. If voting isn't at the heart of what made our country then I don't know what was. That fact is, when lots of people vote, the Republicans lose. A high voter turn-out will almost assure a victory for Obama, a really high turn-out should usher in a landslide. Anything less than a landslide victory for Barack Obama would be absolutely unimaginable for me considering how the Republicans have gone a long way in destroying the American economy, tainting the way the world sees us, and making the fantastically rich even richer.

The Republicans have run a rather despicable campaign, which should be no surprise to anyone. The problem for them this time around is that the Democrats were able to completely outmaneuver the Republicans at every step. The conservatives have also picked a man who is just too damn old to be president. Their pick for vice president was even more disastrous. I read some where that Sarah Palin has re-energized the conservative base of the party. If that is true, it only further demonstrates that the conservative base of the Republican Party is made up of complete morons, and I put that as mildly as I possibly could. It isn't simply her complete lack of intellect and intellectual curiosity that I have a problem with, it's that her ignorance means that she simply rejects any sort of modern thinking. She accuses Obama of being a socialist yet I'm quite sure that she couldn't define that word in anything but the most childish strokes. I can't believe that anyone could be comfortable with that woman as our president.

If Obama wins, this doesn't mean that he is going to get a free pass from liberals. Liberals aren't like the fanatic right-wingers who have supported the atrocious presidency of George W. Bush every step of the way. Absolutely everything Bush did with relation to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been monumental mistakes. Everything. Yet he could count on the complete support of the most rabidly conservative members of his party. I have disagreed with virtually everything he has done as president but I have been especially opposed to his war policies. Undoing what Bush has done will be an enormous challenge for the next resident of the White House.

If Barack Obama wins, the first thing he should do as president is let the American people know that fixing the country's many problems will take a lot of sacrifice on the part of everyone. If Obama goes about righting the wrongs of the Republicans, he probably won't be too popular in the years to come, but easy fixes just aren't going to work. As far as specific policies, I am most interested in two things: Getting U.S. the fuck out of Iraq—and I don't care how he does it—and rolling back the ridiculous Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich in America. Anything Barack Obama cares to do after that will simply be icing on the cake (as opposed to the shit sandwich Bush has been feeding us for 8 years).