Victory 2012 and a cold shower

This past Tuesday, November 6th, the long and arduous road of the journey that is a presidential campaign came to an end. It was a nail-biter, to be sure. To be perfectly honest, after the polls closed, I was sitting at my desk at home, feeling extremely anxious and doing my best not to look at the results just yet, trying to work on my novel for National Novel Writing Month. (What? I’m not just a policy wonk…I’ve been doing creative writing since I could write.)

In the end, Barack Obama emerged the winner, gaining a second term for the presidency. Now America could go to the locker room for a cold shower. But the shower has done little to cool down hot tempers and emotions in the immediate aftermath.

The results surprised many. For me, personally, it was surprising that the race was not as close as it was purported it would be. Obama came out quite a bit ahead. I wouldn’t call it a landslide, but it was definitive; Obama got both the majority of Electoral College votes and popular votes. Click here to view the numbers for the presidential race as well as all of the House, Senate, and gubernatorial races.

For those of you who might not be very familiar with the way the U.S. president is elected (my international readers, mostly), here is a brief lesson. In the U.S., the president is not directly elected by the people. There is an intermediate body called the Electoral College. There are 538 “votes” in the electoral college; the number of votes for each state is determined by population (save for D.C., which may have no more than the smallest number of votes that another state has). A state’s votes goes towards the candidate who has the most popular votes in that state. For example, Obama got more popular votes in the state of Florida (my home state) than Romney, so Florida’s 29 Electoral College votes went to Obama. (Incidentally, Florida wasn’t decided until after Obama had already won.) In order to become president, a candidate needs to get a majority (270 votes, in this case). With this system, however, it is possible for a candidate to get the needed number of electoral votes but have fewer popular votes than another candidate. There have been disputes in the past because of this.

But in this case, there was no question. Obama won.

Obama was able to outraise Romney by the end of the campaign. Much of his funding came from everyday voters, many of them contributing $5 or $10. Romney was getting most of his money from super PACs (political action committees). PACs are committees that work to elect or defeat a particular political candidate. A super PAC is slightly different in that they can raise unlimited amounts of money.

Many people are not happy about this. Many people feel Romney or one of the third party candidates would have been a better option than Obama. I will admit that Obama has failings, some of them rather significant (the drone attacks in Pakistan among other places, for example). But I felt he was infinitely better than the other candidates on domestic policy; I wasn’t terribly impressed with any candidate’s foreign policy this time around.

Despite what people say, I do think that electing Obama was the right choice. I think it gives him a chance to improve and change from the first time around. In my mind, elections in which an incumbent is up for re-election subject the incumbent to accountability. Even if they win, their failings are exposed and gives them incentive to work on it. Of course, being politicians, there is always the risk that they will spout rhetoric on improvement but then once elected, do nothing to back up those words.

But I think this needed to happen. I think Obama’s victory this time around was necessary to heal the horrible divide between the Republicans and the Democrats and perhaps open the way for some other parties. Some are arguing that the status quo could be reaffirmed with this election, but I don’t agree.  Let me explain why.

I believe that this was a wake up call for both the GOP (a nickname for the Republican party that stands for “Grand Old Party”) and, to a smaller extent, the Democratic party, even if neither wants to admit it. After all of the controversial comments on rape and abortion, on the inconsistencies demonstrated by many in the Republican party, many voters got turned off and, I suspect, went with the man they know: Obama. In talking with some people, I’ve found that many who cast their vote for Obama were doing it to vote against Romney rather than actually vote for Obama.  On top of that, the GOP lost some seats in the Senate, where they already have a minority. The House is still dominated by the GOP, but

But here’s how I know that both parties have an awareness that things need to change and to ACTUALLY change, not just rhetoric. From my seat here in Washington, I’m already seeing some shifts. Speaker of the House Boehner and President Obama are already trying to work out compromises on issues like Obamacare and the budget. It looks promising.

Let me put in the obligatory disclaimer: Please don’t get me wrong. Healing the fissure is not going to happen right away. And I could be wrong. The status quo could be reaffirmed and things will only worsen.

The hate I am seeing on the internet from all sides is astounding and frankly disturbing. You think the rest of the world thinks us Americans foolish for who we elect? Not as much as they find us foolish for our squabbling over who we elect. I even saw hateful comments directed at people from other countries who tried to put in their two cents’ worth. In my mind, that is taking it way too far.

There are tons of theories and explanations and suggestions and studies about why Obama won and Romney lost. But it doesn’t have to be complicated. I believe Romney was too much for many people to stomach on an ideological basis. I was not impressed with his ignorance (i.e. Syria is NOT Iran’s route to the sea!), his policies (i.e. I agree Iran should not be building nuclear weapons–I think NO ONE should–but I’m not in support of going to war with them over it AT ALL), or his track record in business at Bain Capital.

For me, the confirmation of this choice was starkly clear when I read that Romney had his staff’s campaign-related credit cards cut off (now that they were unemployed) in the middle of the night after his loss as they returned to their homes all over the country. Someone tried to argue with me that it might have been Romney’s staff that called for the cutoff and that Obama would have done the same thing, but I don’t believe that for a second. Romney was so sure that he was going to win that he did not even prepare a speech in the event that he lost. I see very little chance that Romney would have told his staff to cut off the credit cards if he had lost, considering he was so sure of his victory. And Romney’s a businessman. I doubt he let his staff take ultimate charge of the campaign’s finances; I’m certain he was the one calling the shots there. Furthermore, I don’t believe Obama would have done the same thing. He grew up without having a lot of money; I cannot see him cutting off the people who helped him like that without notice.

And before you run off to tell me how biased I am against Republicans, I will tell you that I liked John McCain in the previous election cycle. I wasn’t impressed with his policies or with his pick of Sarah Palin as a running partner, but at least he was respectable. He fought for our country and was a POW for a long time. And I believe that he believed he was doing the right thing. The fact that Mitt Romney flip-flopped all the time told me he did not put much stock in his own policies; it seemed to me that he just stated what he thought people wanted to hear at the moment. And his track record at Bain disgusts me. I have no respect for him in the slightest.

I think that the initial cold shower wasn’t enough. I think that America needs to take another cold shower, immediately followed by a hike in the tundra of Siberia in the dead of winter. (I lived in Siberia, thank you very much, so I can tell you that it is COLD.) Because (pardon the pun) we need to chill out and cool down. Nothing gets done effectively when emotions are running hot and high.

I hope that this election signals a coming change. I really do. At this point, I think it depends on how much our federal elected officials consider the legacy they want to leave for their successors and the people they serve versus the gain they want for themselves. Will they remember? I don’t know, but to my fellow Americans I say this: Let’s be there to remind them, shall we?