Election Reflections

It's been a couple weeks since the US elections, and I've had some time to reflect on the results.

• Barack Obama - I'm elated that Obama had such an overwhelming victory! After eight years of utterly failed policies, near-complete incompetence, and possibly criminal activities, it's exciting to know that real change is close at hand. Barack Obama is one of those rare politicians that has the ability to inspire people with his passion and eloquence, and I think that that is exactly what the United States needs right now. Ideologically, he's vastly closer to my own values than Bush was, and I'm hopeful that his administration will be able to pick up the pieces of a broken nation and put them back together again. It's going to be hard work and take a long time, but I believe that Obama is in the process of surrounding himself with the right people that will be able to help him do just that.
  
  
• John McCain - I don't mind John McCain as a person or even as the politician that he used to be. In order to become the Presidential nominee for the Republican party, however, he had to pander to a lot of groups that I have absolutely no time for. I think that he'll soon fade away into obscurity, so I won't spend a lot of time talking about him other than to say that I'm very glad things turned out the way they did.
  
  
• Anti-Gay Ballot Measures - This was the area of real disappointment. Out of the four anti-gay ballot measures (Prop 102 in Arizona, Initiative 1 in Arkansas, Amendment 2 in Florida, and Prop 8 in California), all four of them passed. Now those first three, I can at least understand: it's the Deep South and people are still conditioned by entrenched religious "values" to be ooged out by the thought of two men or two women in love. Unfortunate, but we can't expect that these ideas that have been pounded into the social consciousness for hundreds of years to be changed overnight. But then there's California. California! Long thought to be the most progressive state in the Union, the population of California actually voted to recind a right that already existed. Unbelieveable.