In the end it wasn’t even close. Sure, the popular vote was a squeaker but that doesn’t matter in American presidential elections. It’s the “electoral college” totals that matter, and President Obama won that race in Usain Bolt style. So far, the president has collected more than 300 electoral college votes, while Mitt Romney trails with just over 200.
As you would expect, Barack Obama won California, Oregon, Washington (state and DC), New York, New Jersey and all of New England. He also won just about every “swing state.” He won Ohio. He won Colorado. He won Nevada. He won New Mexico. He won New Hampshire. He won Pennsylvania. He won Wisconsin. He even won Virginia. And he is winning Florida, where Sandra and I went door-to-door for him one grueling Sunday.
I bet the Romney pollsters were shocked. They had been boasting about how well they would do in those states, even holding “victory rallies” in places like Land o’ Lakes, Florida.
So much for the billionaires who opened their treasuries to flood the airwaves with campaign cash. So much for the marketing pros and their focus groups. So much for Karl Rove with his deep pockets and Machiavellian morals. So much for the right-wing propaganda machine and its barrage of lies. So much for Fox News and talk radio and the horde of paid bloggers who pollute the internet with their vile commentary and brutish vitriol.
So much for the justices on the Supreme Court who gave the corporate elite free rein to subvert America’s democracy with unlimited torrents of cash.
So much for Ayn Rand and her disciple Paul Ryan. So much for the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Elmer Gantry Evangelicals. So much for hypocrisy and self-righteousness and intolerance and bigotry. And racism. How do you feel today, you Aryan supermen?
And all of you acolytes of the fertilized egg. You who put the egg’s survival above the life and welfare of the mother who gave it life. You who wouldn’t give a dime in taxes to support the egg after it becomes a child. Ask yourselves why God denied you dominion over your fellow-citizens. Shall not the Lord of all Creation do right?
In the end, America’s minorities would not be silenced. In the end, America’s women would not be bossed around. They stood in the cold and the rain for hours and hours… shivering and hungry but resolute in their mission. And the sneaky voter-suppression tricks of Republican weasels like Rick Scott and John Husted could not prevail.
According to a Twitter report, voters were still standing in line in Miami-Dade county at 1:42 in the morning.
Let’s hear it for the African Americans! Let’s hear it for the women! Let’s hear it for the Latinos! Let’s hear it for the moderates!
Let’s hear it for the liberals!
In the end it was not just Barack Obama who won. It was not just reformers like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson …
It was not just America.
By beating back the threat posed by the radical new Republicans and their slippery standard bearer, American voters made the world a winner. With President Obama’s cool head in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, America will be like a big brother to other nations, not like the blustering schoolyard bully it would have been under Romney and the radicals.
The chance of a Third World War is greatly diminished.
Let’s hear it for Mankind!
