Obama's Mandate

I was happy and relieved to see that Barack Obama won in fairly convincing fashion last night, if only to prevent charges of disenfranchisement and another "stolen" election. Here are a few scattershot thoughts, in no apparent order, but I wanted to get them out there:

Obama won a relatively close popular vote by about six percentage points over McCain, but was able to collect a sizable lead in the electoral college by winning key battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia.

Almost 119 Million Americans turned out to vote, which is decent until you consider we are now a nation of over 300 Million. In very rough terms, that's still less than 40% of Americans casting a ballot for the next President.

**Edited on 11/6/08** The numbers I can find online still add up to only about 120 Million Americans having cast a ballot on Tuesday. But on The Newshour on PBS last night, they said the total number of votes cast was over 132 Million, and that the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot was something like 60%. Obviously, not all Americans being counted in the 300+ Million number are eligible to vote. The other discrepancy (between 120 and 132 Million) could be explained by news sites' refusal to update their electoral maps with the results from NC and Missouri.

Despite the anecdotal evidence (stories) of young Americans being energized by Obama and turning out to vote, NPR last night said the rate of first-time voters in this election (~10%) basically equalled the rate of first-time voters in the last election (~11%).

Missouri failed to vote for the next President for only the second time (ever? or just in the past 100 years?).

The Redskins once again correctly predicted the next President. Any time they lose their last home game before the election, the incumbent party loses the White House. That was true this year, as the Redskins lost to Pittsburgh 23-6 on Monday night, but was not true in 2004.

It appears that Senators from Arizona, no matter how popular and well-respected they may be in their home state, cannot get elected to our nation's highest office. The sample size is small, though.

My three-year-old son was watching the Today show with my wife this morning, as we tried to educate him about Obama being the next President. He cried out, "No Obama! No Obama!" But really, he just wanted us to change the channel from the news over to Curious George on PBS Kids.

We also enjoyed eating "Bumblebee Pie" yesterday, courtesy of my son. It was nothing more than cornbread to go with our chili-style meal, but it kinda looked like a pie before it was cut, and since we put honey on the cornbread, it suddenly had an association with bumblebees. So be it! I love how kids come up with different names for things!

It also made me think of when my parents renamed an apple turnover-style dessert in honor of Barry Goldwater after his defeat to LBJ in 1964. To this day, I think of that dessert come election time. My mom, as a Democrat, has refused to make it for decades.

A classic fearless prediction I saw in James Taranto's Best of the Web column last week: Obama will not be the first President to appoint an African-American to the post of Secretary of State.

Here is sincerely hoping that Obama's election will turn out to be a real game-changer on the topic of race relations in America. We are not far removed from Jim Crow, segregation, and disenfranchisement, as Obama pointed out in his victory speech last night. Things have changed a lot just since the Civil Rights Act was signed by LBJ in 1964. Let's hope we continue making progress and that this election marks real hope for healing and racial togetherness (unity is too strong a word) in the future. I really don't want a return to the Sixties.

I sincerely hope that Obama will practice what he preached on the campaign trail. That he will be a uniter, not a divider. That he will actually follow steps he himself set forth when he became the President of the Harvard Law Review, and appoint more conservative members to editorial positions than he did his liberal friends. They were upset with him then, but it showed that Obama had principles and wanted to make sure the best people were appointed to the right positions. Too much of politics today has become this: I funded your campaign, so what cherry position do I get in your Cabinet? More simply: What type of access to power can I buy? If Obama truly wants to govern the country according to principle, then he will appoint one or more Republicans (can anyone say Colin Powell?) to his Cabinet.

As a follow-on to that note, it could be that Obama very well understands the age-old principle of, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Obama will also need to rein in members of his own party, members that see the large gains made by House and Senate Democrats, and who will want to drive a very left-leaning agenda simply because they have the votes to do so. Nancy Pelosi, I'm thinking of you!

If Obama wants to be a uniter, and to get away from the partisan politics that have both poisoned the atmosphere in Washington and caused everyday Americans to lose faith in their government as a whole. Let's not forget that the approval ratings for Congress is at all time lows, in the single digits. Something different needs to be done there.

To quote Forrest Gump: "That's about all I have to say about that."

Voting Information for 4 November

Just a couple of quick links for prospective voters out there:

The WSJ this morning reported that voter information would be available via Google's mapping website, which is here: http://maps.google.com/vote. When you click on that link, Google asks for your home address, and then they provide the exact location of your polling station tomorrow. No muss, no fuss! There should be no question of where a person needs to go to vote legally, without crossing jurisdictions and/or having to cast a provisional ballot. If a person has a mobile device, like a BlackBerry or an iPhone, I assume that person could pull up this info on the mobile Google maps application.

Google also set up a temporary (at least, I assume it's temporary) website to provide full election coverage for the 2008 election. It's chock full of information on each candidate, and it worth perusing if you get the chance.

In my home county, the Champaign County Clerk, Mark Shelden, used his website to post all sorts of really good information for voters to use tomorrow. There are sample ballots, a way to check your own voter registration status, and helpful guides of what to bring to the polling station tomorrow. There are images of the electronic voting kiosks people can expect to see at some polling stations, of which this is one:





A prospective voter can print out a representative ballot, study it, make his or her decisions about who to vote for in each race, and even carry that sample ballot into the booth tomorrow before transferring the marks over to the official ballot. There's even a 32 page PDF voter's guide that contains everything a person would want to know about voting in Champaign County. So there's really no excuse for not knowing what to do or where to go tomorrow.

Honestly, this is one of the better government websites (and especially local government!) that I have seen in a long time. I applaud the webmaster that put it together. Best of all, they essentially advertised this service through the local news; I heard about the County Clerk's website on the radio on my way in to work this morning, and it was easy to find through a quick Google search.

So, make sure you find the voting information for your locality and get out the vote! No matter who you decide to vote for, the important thing is making sure you take the time to vote. Just do it!

The VP Debate, After Effects

I'm not entirely convinced that last night's VP debate did anything to shift the scales on this general election. I say that, even though I continue with my previous assessment: if Sarah Palin didn't have some gaffe or obvious blunder during the debate, then she won it.

During the debate, Sarah demonstrated her folksiness ("You betcha!"), her ability and willingness to take Biden and Obama head-on, and a fair amount of Refreshing Reaganism, as the PBS commentators called it last night. I have to admit that I was unable to actually watch the debate, since I was driving back from a business meeting in Indianapolis during the majority of the debate. But hearing Palin speak (thank you, NPR, for airing the debate!) made it sound like she was not intimidated by a veteran Washington Insider like Biden. She didn't come right out and attack him for being an insider until about an hour into the debate, and that could be a missed opportunity for her. But I don't think her candidacy will any longer be thought of as "Gidget Goes to Washington," another PBS reference at the end of the debate.

Palin obviously crammed very well in the foothills of Sedona, AZ, at the McCain ranch during this past week. She knew her facts and figures, even if she didn't hit the numbers as hard as Biden did. She knew her foreign policy stance much better than she has shown in previous interviews, and she came across much more credibly than she had during those interviews. All in all, she showed that she should be taken seriously as a candidate for VP.

However, whether or not that actually changed anything with voters is a completely different story. As I said before, I have a hunch the die is already cast for an Obama presidency thanks to the economic meltdown and banking crisis of the past two weeks. The news this morning that the McCain/Palin campaign is suspending operations in the battleground state of Michigan doesn't look good. What's next, Ohio? Florida? I understand the need to shepherd resources and apply them to the best chances of victory, but what that really signals is either a lack of funding or a lack of momentum, both of which are critical to maintain in an election.

What I'm looking forward to at this point is the PBS Frontline review on both McCain and Obama, currently scheduled for 14 October in our local market. I trust this Frontline episode, entitled "The Choice: 2008" (more info is available here) will be as influential in making my election decision as the Frontline career retrospective on Bush and Kerry was in 2004.

Quick, Blame the FBI!

So, I caught this headline: House Democrats press FBI on 2001 anthrax attacks, security guidelines  from today's GovExec newsletter.  (The full news story is here.)

The upshot is that Congressional Democrats want to avoid the Harry Truman label, "Do Nothing Congress," in an election year.  The McCain-Palin ticket already beat that drum during the RNC, and given the historically low approval ratings (yes, the American public is more disgusted with Congress than with W.), I'm sure they want to do SOMETHING before November.  Hmmm... you think they could try to actually do their jobs and pass some legislation?  Naaah, it's far easier to beat up the Director of the FBI during hearings that allow Honorable Members of the House Judiciary Committee to preen on national TV, even if it is C-SPAN.

Now, I certainly don't know anything about the inner workings of the Federal BI.  I don't doubt that warning signs pointing to Bruce Ivins were missed during the entire anthrax investigation.  The practice of hounding a "person of interest" was dissected by a WSJ opinion piece here (subscription req'd), and certainly, Steven Hatfill can feel vindicated these days.  I actually really liked a previous opinion piece where the WSJ attributed the "Steven Hatfill = Mad Scientist" theory to the left in general and Nicholas Kristoff of the NY Times in particular (story here) because they (the left) didn't want the anthrax attacks pinned to Iraq or Al Qaeda.

What I have a harder time with is the second punch the Congressional Democrats want to inflict upon Robert Mueller.  Quoting verbatim from GovExec:

"We are ... concerned about recent reports indicating that the FBI may have contributed to the current subprime mortgage crisis by failing to act on its knowledge of wide-scale mortgage fraud," they wrote. "It also appears that the FBI failed to prioritize this crime, as evidenced by the reported decrease in the number of agents devoted to the issue and the attorney general's refusal to create a national task force to centralize FBI mortgage fraud investigations."

Again, I really know nothing about the inner workings of the FBI.  I don't know how they prioritize their case load, and whether fraud of any sort would ever rise above the level of drug trafficking, murder, racketeering, or whatever else they investigate.  But given that the private companies involved in the massive collateralization or securitization of mortgage loans did everything in their power to hide the underlying shakiness of many of those loans ("Bundle that shinola up as quickly as possible and sell it to some other sucker!" I can imagine the brokers saying), I kinda doubt the FBI had much advance warning of mortgage-related fraud until after the press started exploring it.  Which is the same time as the rest of us really woke up to it.

Should the FBI have known what was going on in the real estate markets?  Maybe.  Was there an obvious crime being committed?  Were there any advance indicators that mortgage brokers were engaging in fraudulent activities?  Or is the FBI just being scapegoated here?  Basically, this is another example of passing the buck from the Legislative Branch, who probably could have written tighter laws preventing mortgage lenders from engaging in deceptive or outright fraudulent activities, to the Executive Branch, who is charged with enforcement of the existing laws.  

All of which is being done after the fact, in an election year, for the purposes of political grandstanding.  Look at us, voters!  We have your best interests at heart!

Nice.