Tobold, I'm not sure what you're congratulating us for. All we did was elect a politician to the office of President of the United States. We do that every four years, you know. (And yes, I know; technically our Electoral College system means that We, The People, don't really elect our President.)
So what if he's Black? Why is that such a big deal? It might look like we overcame our prejudice and elected a Black President, but Californians still voted to discriminate against homosexuals and deny them the same rights the State bestows upon heterosexuals. We're not exactly the forward thinking nation you perceive us to be.
Record turn out? Hardly. Obama got (approx.) 63,350,000 votes, while McCain got 56,000,000. That's 119,350,000 votes.
In 2004, Bush & Kerry got 121,000,000 votes between them. They beat the Obama/McCain team by 1,650,000 votes.
Also Obama got just 1.3 million more votes than Bush did in 2004. That's hardly an example of overwhelming support or inspiring a nation.
Considering the approx. adult population of the U.S. is 220 million, slightly more than half of those eligible actually voted. (Yes, I know. Some of those adults are Felons, Residential Aliens, or Illegals, none of whom can vote.) But what does it really say about someone who realistically only garnered the support of a quarter of the population?
American's two-party system also practically handpicks the candidates the Public think they're voting on, so by "electing" a Black President it's not like we did anything amazing. We flipped a coin, and this time it came up heads. A black head, sure, but it's still just the head of a Politician. What's the big deal?
By the way, this is not Sour Grapes, I'm not a sore loser (didn't the pro-homosexual rights statement give that away?) because I'm not a Republican. I'm an Independent-Libertarian who is disillusioned with the U.S. political system, and I'm neither rich nor powerful enough to change it.
Change? Ha!
Obama is a Politician. You know he lied during his campaign because he has the exact same tell as every other Politician who's gone before him: Their lips moved.
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My best guess is that Tobold has bought into the hype and perceptions that fuel the American political machine. He wouldn't be the first. Heck, Karl Denninger, the Market Ticker guy who's pretty prickly about monetary policy, joined the Obama camp. Patrick of Patrick.net also chose Obama, despite railing for months if not years about fiscal responsibility. Rather than vote their conscience with Ron Paul or someone who actually espoused their views, even if it was third party, they bought the hype and pulled the trigger for the "lesser of evils"... again. As long as voters buy that line, we'll get what leaders we deserve.
I really wish there was a "none of the above" option or something like it, and that that huge segment of the population would chime in. Obama doesn't have historic support, as you noted, and not only is the country socially fractured, but we're still financially broken.
People just don't pay attention to the real fundamentals of our country, but hey, Obama makes them feel good.
Aren't you going to comment on just how much the Obama campaign cost?
That's an obscene amount of cash.
Actually I'm not an Obama supporter. I'd say give the man a chance now he is elected, but I didn't like his style over substance campaign. "Hope" and "Change" do not a political program make.
Apart from it being polite to congratulate the winner, whoever it is, I still think America had a "good election", on a relative scale. The numbers I have talked of a record turnout of 65%, which would be low for an European election, but is high for a US one.
About the clear mandate, one also has to think in relative terms. Obama got 7 million votes more than McCain, a bit over 5 points of difference. Compared to Florida's hanging chads and 50-50 America, that is quite a change.
Plus, while the campaigns weren't all that clean, one has to give credit to McCain for his early and gracious concession speech. Sorry, retreating to their log cabins and starting to paint "Palin for 2012" campaign signs is not a good option for Republicans. McCains proposal for some bipartisan collaboration on the huge problems the world faces is welcome.
I believe Tobold was just excited as many people were to not have 4 more years of Bush. I can't remember the exact % of Europeans who thought Mccain would have been a huge mistake but I know it was somewhere around 75%+
This figure is completely understandable considering Europe is primarily socialist. It's not like we really had a choice though. As Jesse Ventura put it, the US had 2 choices this year: a warmonger who is slightly socialist, or a socialist who is slightly a warmonger.
Obama "looks" like America evolved. His tone of voice, even when speaking negatively about his opponent, was indistinguishable from his positive comments about the people of the US.
When you get right down to it, I believe we were duped again but in a different way. I feel like our political system is treating us the same way mortgage lenders were treating high risk borrowers in the early 2000's. They are more than willing to spend us into the ground and never admit there is a problem until the country is in foreclosure. It will be interesting to see who gets blamed once our debt reaches 20 trillion and the income tax can no longer handle the interest payments on the debt. Adam Smith is rolling over in his grave.
Great comments, everyone.
For more on Obama and his fund raising, see this story in the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph. Considering how much he did raise & spend on this campaign, Obama paid a lot more per vote than McCain did. Then again, he also emerged the clear winner so it was obviously money well spent. But when a President's war chest doesn't come from Public Funding, one is inclined to ask, where did it come from? Exactly who is our President now beholden to? Not the Public, because while we voted for him, we didn't fund his campaign. But someone did, and that someone will expect to see a favorable return on his investment. As Hannibal loved to say, "Quid pro quo."
Tobold, based on the title of your blog, you were congratulating America, and I'm not entirely sure America is the winner here. That said, you did go on to congratulate "Comrade Obama" so I'll concede the point that it is polite to congratulate the winner. And as you (almost) always do, you started some excellent dialog in your comments section, which (I think) was your real goal all along.
Re: McCain's concession speech, while I watched neither concession nor acceptance speech, a staunch Democrat in my office agreed that McCain was very polite, and was very much the gracious & humble loser. Now that's more of what we need to see from our Leaders; humility in defeat.
I'm prepared to give Obama a chance, I'm just not very optimistic about what he can or will do, even with the Democrats in control of both House & Senate.
Way to really get in there and contribute Mr. "anonymous"...Wow Capn, you were on top of getting rid of that guy.
I think I would be considered fairly anti-Obama (ok, ok, and anti-McCain), but one of the major reasons for that is that he hasn't provided a single sentence of substance yet. With that though, I'm willing to wait and see if this guy can actually accomplish something good. We know the democrats have been in power and not done anything with it, maybe Obama can change that. It could have been a true landslide (It most definately was NOT), if he had laid out some concrete thoughts that went beyond "fired up", "lets change the world".
As it is, America elected a novelty act, for which we should be ashamed. Can he be more than a novelty? He only has 2 years to accomplish that.
I probably wouldn't have deleted his comment if he'd been able to back it up with some data, or at least put a little more effort into it.
After years of reading Tobold, he's a typical condescending European leftist that thinks he knows what's best for America. Meanwhile the warmongering of the former Soviet Union grows each day in his backyard -- yet he remains conveniently silent about that.
It troubles me that this self-important blowhard Tobold thinks that his bumbling political opinions matter so much that he has to publish them on his MMO blog and make his followers suffer through them. He should stick to discussing what he knows best: video games. Enough already.
Haha. Did you also read all the nonsense about non-Americans thinking they had a right to vote in our election, just because it impacts them (As if their stupidity doesn't affect us just as much)? Hell, we have Americans that don't even contribute enough around here to deserve a right to vote. We also have a President-elect not born on American soil, but that's a different topic. :D
A nice article if you ever get too pessimistic :-)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/29/IN290713.DTL
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