Obama's supporters can now change their slogan from "Yes, we can!" to "Yes, we DID!": Winning by the biggest Democratic margin since the mid-60s, and taking many states and counties that had been staunchly red for years if not decades, Barack Hussein Obama is now the President-Elect of the United States of America.
I wish to extend my sincere congratulations to the African-American community on this occasion for this monumental achievement which, as NPR political commentator Juan Williams put it, was inconceivable for many African-Americans, including himself, even as recently as a year ago.
With Obama holding distinct margins in many significant voter segments - young, women, whites, blacks, Hispanics, new/first-time voters, undecideds - and with the post-racial, let's-bring-the-country-together approach he has used toward the general voting public, it is clear that this country as a whole has indeed begun to move beyond race and is starting to become a post-racial society. Thus rendering race warlords like Jesse Jackson completely obsolete. (As Booker T. Washington wrote: "There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well.") Jackson has known for some time that the end was near - hence his muttered comment this summer that he wanted to "cut [Obama's] nuts off," unaware that the lapel microphone he was wearing was still very much on.
Now, it will be very interesting to see exactly what kind of President Obama will be - what stuff he is truly made of. While I would agree that he is definitely untested, he is not unknowable, an unknown quantity as pundits on both the left and right have argued. His background and history have been there for all to see, from the reminiscences he shares in his books about the Marxist, Communist, Socialist and Radical mentors he had and friendships he cultivated during his teenage, college and law school years, to his voting record, which has been the most liberal in U.S. Senate history - even left of Bernie Sanders (S-VT), a Socialist. We all know exactly what we're getting there, or at least we should. But if, as the chief executive of a country that is largely moderate/centrist to center right, he insists on imposing his hard-left ideologies upon it, he's just going to alienate a whole lotta people: that large minority of people who voted for McCain and who could easily vote Repubs back into Congress in droves in two years if he screws up. And he knows it. He'll have to refrain from over-reaching, no matter how loudly the firebrands who support him on the far left in Congress and elsewhere scream at him to do this or that. Because even though the Repubs got their clocks cleaned, there are still enough of 'em in the Senate to block any legislation that is over-the-top. If they ever absorb the lessons learned, find their brains and balls again and decide to return to the basic principles they abandoned when they started acting like the Democrats in abandonment of all fiscal and governmental restraints, that is.
But whether Obama actually WILL move to the center, like Clinton wisely did during his 8-year administration, or, at the left's behest, ram through onerous and ill-conceived policies that nobody would agree with continuing once their ruinous effects are felt, remains to be seen.
As concerned as I am about what the Obama Administration will do domestically, there are at least some saving graces there, like the ones I listed above, that will hopefully soften the blows. I am even more concerned about what the Obama Administration will do (or fail to do) abroad, because there's no safety net there. His artless, naïve comments about invading Pakistan and meeting dictators "without preconditions," the fact that he has OVER THREE HUNDRED foreign policy advisers, etc. the fact that our enemies - our enemies! - are endorsing him, should have been enough to give anyone pause. But with the economic meltdown, it's all about the economy now. The American people are no longer thinking about how the Chief Executive-Elect will be handling (or not) the War on Terror, Islamic radicalism, or any of the other issues raging around the world right now. Their fear over what will become of their wallets has drowned out all other concerns, so that they no longer care about what's going on in the world beyond their borders, except, perhaps, what foreign countries "think" of us. But these issues are still there, and must be addressed; and whether our new President will be coming at them from the left, right, or center, they must be addressed in a consistent, coherent, decisive fashion to promote national and world security, prevent further chaos, and strengthen our partnerships among our trusted allies. How will someone with OVER THREE HUNDRED foreign policy advisers come up with the strong, consistent, coherent, decisive foreign policy that the United States needs??
Don't know? Me neither. I certainly hope Obama will be able to enlighten us and show us how it can be done.
Anyway ... we will see.
Labels: 2008 presidential race, barack obama, european politics, john mccain, politics
