Election Reflections

It was touch and go early in the evening, but ended up being a great night. It was wonderful going to sleep knowing that Obama had been reelected. The only fly in the ointment was Michelle Bachmann winning reelection. How can we live in such a blue state and still have a representative as loony as Bachmann representing us? Oh well. All in all the election results were positive for Minnesota and the nation.

However, I was reminded last night of why I don’t watch the mainstream news anymore. As Obama’s victory came into clearer focus during the evening, pundits (I’m not even sure which channel I was watching) went on and on about how this wasn’t a mandate and that the President was now obliged to reach across the aisle to Republicans and be humble and willing to negotiate and blah, blah, blah. Bullshit.

The one and only reason why a grand budget deal was not reached between Congressional Republicans and the President in 2010 is that Republicans were hoping this would be considered a failure for the President, which would then be used to help Romney win the Presidency. Obama was willing to give away one of his daughters to reach a deal, but Republicans put politics above the good of the country and rejected everything Obama put forward.

Now that he doesn’t have to worry about another election, Obama could and should stand firm. It’s time for Republicans in Congress to get off their ideological merry-go-round and start getting serious about helping the American economy recover. Even though the economic recovery has not been strong and there are still millions of Americans hurting financially, the country rejected Romney’s ridiculous non-solution of lowering the taxes of the wealthiest individuals and raising taxes on the rest of us. The President needs to use this as leverage in future negotiations.

Once again liberals and progressives went to the voting booths to support Obama. His first four years were disappointing in a number of ways, but we continue to hold out hope that we’ll see the Obama who promised change in 2008 actually emerge from behind the curtain and make turn that promise into reality.