Obama wins
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on November 5th, 2008 5:35 am by HL
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 has 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 state and really this whole race) but it wasn’t. It never was. This race hadn’t been close for over a month yet the talking heads were just talking and talking about John McCain’s surge. NOT! There wasn’t any significant surge. For reasons that were unclear to me, McCain threw time and money into Pennsylvania in the last 3 – 4 weeks. Why? None of the poll numbers hinted that Pennsylvania was close. Some polls had McCain down by 10 point yet he and Sarah Palin was out there (and don’t forget Joe the Plumber). The final vote total revealed that there were no surprises in Pa. Obama won by 11.
About an hour later, Ohio went for Obama. I found it interesting 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 back drop. 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 3rd 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 Bush being so unpopular, President Bush drug 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 for being worthless. If Bush could have gotten his approval numbers into the low 40’s he would 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 that 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) and a couple of states that remain too close to call (Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina). America with your young and old, rich and poor, black, white, and brown party tonight because we need to wake up and figure out how to change this country that we love.