Just some random thoughts after watching the election returns last night.
It felt good to be able to vote for someone, rather than against someone, as I had been doing, unfortunately, for about the past two decades.
I watched both speeches and saw something interesting. When Sen. McCain said that he had called President-Elect Obama to congratulate him, many in the audience starting booing and shouting. Sen. McCain had to quiet the audience several times. When President-Elect Obama said that he had received a call from Sen. McCain, his audience cheered and applauded Sen. McCain.
I don't think Sen. McCain ever fully realized that his tactics, the usual strategy of character-assassination and charges that his opponent was unpatriotic and a terrorist, would actually provoke people's fears to the point of threatening Obama's life, as I saw during one speech that McCain made.
Of course, the "wise ones" all decided that the economy explained McCain's defeat. Well, at least this would help the Republicans justify their loss, although they would be far wiser to really look at what happened. Every expert last night seemed to have forgotten something. President-Elect Obama beat the unbeatable Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, and the economy was not a factor. I think she made the same mistake Sen. McCain made:
It was NOT business as usual yesterday.
While I do believe that the economy had a great deal to do with McCain's loss, and the fact that it would have been very hard for ANY republican to win after the last 8 years of Bush, but I have a question for you about your Clinton observation.
ReplyDeleteDo you feel that Obama's victory over Clinton in the primary had more to do with our collective prejudice? As a country, every great advance forward has usually been by a black man before a white woman.
I agree that the state of the economy helped Obama, but I believe there were other factors that were even more important.
ReplyDeleteAs for Hilary being the victim of sexism, I don't know. I know the charge was made by many of her supporters at the end of the primaries, but they also never mentioned racism, which Hillary played on several times, subtlely, but present. Perhaps the two "isms" canceled each other out.
I think that it was that Obama recognized the prevailing mood for a change, and he grabbed it and ran with it, whereas the others still acted as if it were business as usual. HC was too closely identified, I think, with the past, and she had too many out there who disliked her, regardless of her gender, and I, frankly, was one of them.