Never Silent, Not A Majority

It will be hours before we have an idea about the numbers on this election. I have a couple of predictions.

Obama will win. I don't know by how much. McCain, whether he loses big or small can take comfort in one thing. He and the Hivehead have mobilized the base. I believe when the dust settles it will be clear that more people voted Red than ever before. No matter how many, more will have voted Blue. There is a deep divide in this country and getting wider as well as deeper. Neither side will feel beaten and neither side will become complacent. The color of the rhetoric will become brighter and the volume louder. The distance between the sides has become too great for even the those with the longest reach and willing to lean the farthest over the gap to grasp hands in cooperation.

Obama will win two terms. Those that put Obama in the Presidency will not care if he is successful in terms of effectiveness. His Presidency will be not one of expediency or ideology but faith. A populist faith that the other side only pretends to have. A faith that this country can become something it has never been and will never be. A place of equal opportunity for all. No place has ever been that. No place ever will be but they will come out today and they will come out again in four years, no matter what. After eight years, they will see how wrong they were but they will have given it a shot. After that, your guess is as good as mine. One thing to remember though, is that once people establish a pattern of regular voting, they tend to keep to it. This bodes well for Democracy in America, if not for solution to the problems that beset us.

I read a lot on the Internet about Sarah Palin being the anti Obama. The transformational political figure in the future of the Republican party. The only thing transformational about her is her ability to make herself into the kind of gross, cartoonish, caricature that was needed to mobilize the lumpish, militantly ignorant, masses that the Republicans increasingly count on to buoy up their vote tallies. There may be a continuing place for her but not in the leadership. Never again.