Final Election Thoughts... I hope

[sleigh]

Final election thoughts:

California, I'm disappointed. I expected the other two gay marriage bans in other states to go through, but I thought you would vote for sanity and compassion and human rights and quash yours. You didn't. It was close, but too many of you were bigoted, for that's what it is: bigotry.

I understand that there is currently a push to dispute this amendment with the Supreme Court, as it denies a minority group the rights granted to a majority group and is thus unconstitutional, just as denying African-Americans the right to marry in this country would be unconstitutional. I hope that happens -- I find that to be an excellent argument.

We shall see. This battle might have been lost but the war is far from over.

******

Came across this on John Scalzi's blog, so many of you may have already seen it. Fox News (!) did a bit on the untold, off-the-record-until-after-the-election things their reporter was told about Sarah Palin by staffers in the McCain campaign. It's... interesting and would indicate that there was little-to-no vetting of her as a candidate beforehand. Click here if you're interested in hearing it.

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I predicted that Palin would be a liability, within three days of her nomination. Too bad McCain didn't take my advice.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I originally thought that Palin would be a Hail Mary pass that worked -- she is an energetic and charismatic speaker of prepared texts (though she tends to fall apart if she strays from the prepared text). She absolutely energized the religious, right-wing base of the Republican Party...

But you were right and prescient. It took me longer L-) Ultimately, she alienated the undecided voters and also energized the other side. The far right still loves her, but it's sounding like the moderate faction within the Republican Party really is upset with her. I don't think she's going away, and she may end up causing more divineness among the Republicans. We'll see...

All in all, I think McCain should have gone with his instincts and chosen Lieberman. That would have alienated the base and made them angry, yes, but it would have cemented the "maverick" message and the "work across the aisle" message, would have brought a lot of independents to him, and the base ultimately would have come back because they couldn't pull the lever for Obama. A McCain/Lieberman ticket would have made this a much tighter race.

What do you think?

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're right. Initially, I was excited about Palin, because she was introduced to the public as a moderate. It took me about an hour to realize that she wasn't. My husband was talking about how great it would be if McCain chose Lieberman, and I kind of rolled my eyes, because it's sort of like he'd have been picking up a used and discarded vice presidential nominee. LOL. But I have no problem with Liebermann. He's all mavericky, doncha know? I think it would have been a stronger campaign, though Obama would have still won with the financial crisis.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

If someone could have predicted the financial crisis (and I don't think that was likely several months ago when the Veep choices were made), then Romney would have made an excellent choice for McCain, since Romney would have offset McCain's weakness on economic issues.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

That was me, above, unlogged-in. I agree with this. I think it is disingenuous for anyone to say that someone should have seen this coming and preempted it with policy or regulation. We can look back and see the mistakes that were made, but I really don't think anyone could have seen it coming with enough advance notice to do something about it. I did hear people talking about it as early as last spring, about what was going on in the derivitives market and how dangerous it was. It was someone from an investment house, and they removed all of their clients' money from the stock market. I was impressed, and very worried, but not brave enough to go to our financial advisor and ask to do the same. As well, I didn't want to believe it.

Anyway, getting off the subject there, but, yes, that came out of the blue, and Romney would have been stronger on those issues, but he and McCain had clashing personalities. I know a lot of right wing conservatives would have liked to have Romney on the ticket, though, especially here in Michigan.