I was wrong! Wait a minute...I was right !

OK, I'm going to get this out of the way now. One of these will be an appropriate blog entry a week from tomorrow, Wed, Nov. 5.

I was wrong.  I feared a lackluster, out of touch, high-minded left-liberal Democrat campaign this year.  A campaign all but guaranteed to turn off middle class voters and scare away potentially progressive minded working class voters with talk of wealth redistribution, tax increases, carbon footprints, gun control, defeatism in Iraq, and the United Nations.   I predicted that Sarah’s withering parody of Obama and the democratic left during the convention was the beginning of a (seen and unseen) right-wing offensive that would keep the Democrats on the defensive throughout the fall.   In my analysis, Obama was waging a high-minded intelligent campaign, like Adlai Stevenson’s against a military hero during the 1950s—another oratorically gifted candidate afraid to land a punch.  I predicted that young voters would not turn out in record numbers, as they did, and that people would vote their fears (again) and not their hopes.

Turns out that these serious times rewarded the serious, intelligent, and unflappable guy with fresh ideas.  And we the people finally woke up, and came to.  Few could have predicted the landslide (though many will be claiming, in their op-eds and blogs these next few days, how prescient they were about precisely the outcome we witnessed last night).   But a landslide is exactly what we need.  The people want change---and we will have it.  I was wrong about the outcome---but I couldn’t be happier.

I was right.  America did it again; the good guys lost and we are in for four more years of….oh god, let’s not even contemplate it.  Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran, and Rudy Giuliani on the Supreme Court.  Oy!  Do we hunker down and hope the next four years pass quickly?  Or hit the streets now, and put the new administration on notice?   OK, I saw this coming (see above), but there is no satisfaction in being part of an electorate that gives voice to the need for change but behaves in the same old, same old.  Speaking of old, I am lighting a candle for John McCain’s health and well-being every night for the next four years, and I hope you’ll do the same.  Tina, time to renegotiate that long-term SNL contract!