This whole discussion about Missouri brings me back about a somewhat sadder point, being that too many americans think that it's more important to vote for someone who's the right amount of conservative or liberal, when it should really be about whether he (or maybe one day she) can run the country properly and right now take better care of the economy. I'm always disheartened when I see hard working Americans who barely make a living then run to the polls to vote republican no matter what (up to "this candidate is closer to god") when republicans have a good track record of helping people stay rich or get richer, no matter what the cost, and no so much a good record of helping the struggling class.
While Bush was shown in the end not to have won the first election (but the real recount showing that Gore did win Florida happened too late to matter), I still never really got how all those people who now got royally fucked over by the republicans and their inaction in front of wall street greediness, thought that voting for the "closer to god" candidate was more important than the one who would actually take are of middleclass America.
The worst part is how many who foreclosed and lost their house and/or job, would still blindly vote republican based on their personal convictions and religion instead of economical common sense for them. I tend to understand people who are better off and want as little government intervention and taxes as possible. Hoewever, what if you're liberal but want little government intervention and low taxes? or what if you're very conservative but you need government help, a real health care system and a little bit of government help here and there, as well as a proper retirement? Well, in both cases you can't really vote republican or democrat and yet most voters are adamant about one party or the other instead of realizing that it's a tradeoff in both cases and they'd be better off picking the more intelligent, articulate, and reasonable candidate (Bush being neither of the 3).
At least the good news for 2008 is that while Bush #2 is a congenital idiot and a drunk, I at least respect McCain as being a reasonable and sensible man. I might not agree with his republican stance on the economy, or the war in Irak (which is responsible for a big hole in the said economy, even when you put aside all the money that was stolen by Dick Cheney and Halliburton), I really really wish that McCain had been the republican candidate for the last 8 years if we had to have a republican for the last 8 years. I'm somehow pretty sure that he would have done a much better job. That said, because of his political party and campaign finance money that he had to accept, even if he is a respectable straight up person, I'm worried of how much he would be able to do to fix the economy compared to Barrack without angering people and corporations who financed his campaign, but it sure can't be worse than Bush.
In a not so funny way, it's actually worrying how many Americans don't know or care that their president is seen as who he is, a dangerous blistering idiot by the rest of the world, and for as long as I've known US presidents, including when I didn't live in the US, this had never happened for prior presidents. Some were more liked than others, but none was so universally despised and disliked as Bush #2 (people in other countries actually occasionally give me crap for my living in the US under such a terrible president).
Another thing that too many people don't seem to realize here is that this two party system actually forces political candidates to pick one of two buckets, and that bucket is likely not to fit all their beliefs (like some republicans are actually fairly liberal, but republican financially, just like some democrats can have republicans financial tendencies), so in the end the party they picked is just something they had to affiliate themselves to, but it means that it's more important to look at the candidate him/herself than his/her party affiliation.
To illustrate my point, California, which is supposed to be a democratic state, actually impeached its democratic governor, and replaced him with a republican: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold is not much of a liberal, he's not exactly a fan of gay rights, and even took steps to prevent gay marriages, but on the other side of the fence, he's been doing a better job running the state than the previous democrat guy (and gay marriages were fought and won in the CA supreme court). This is how things are really supposed to work. Hopefully it'll work on the federal scale too...
So, I'll be celebrating either way tomorrow because it'll be the end of Bush either way. I'm just secretly hoping for Obama because if McCain wins and then dies half way through his mandate, we'll be severely screwed with Palin: she looks even more stupid and ignorant than Bush, which I didn't think was possible (that said, you could make the same point about Obama if he gets shot by a racist, as his VP doesn't seem like a great guy either).
BTW, for those who thought by now that I was a democrat loving liberal socialist hippie, I'm more of a right wing liberal, which is something between democrat and republican and that doesn't exist in the US.
Doh! I guess I won't have my picture with the president afterall :)
Democrats would definitely raise my taxes if they win and I will personally lose out. I'm really for the more reasonable guy, whoever that happens to be at the time and would have likely picked McCain over a seemingly useless democrat candidate. Either way, it doesn't matter, both because the electoral system is broken with the electoral college and individual californian votes don't count since it's a democrat state in the end either way, and because I'm not a citizen so I don't get to vote either way :) |