Obligatory US Election Post
Nov 08
I didn’t realize how nervous I was about the election until the day of. Probably because of how important I know it was, but also because I lived there for about 5 years and still pay income taxes to them. (That whole taxation without representation thing)
But anyways, what I’ve found most interesting is the media coverage today. The media is billing this as “the end of an era”, etc, and the Republicans seem all downtrodden. Did any of these people actually expect the Republicans would be in power from now until eternity? Why are these events seen as such a shock?
I understand the media’s reaction because they need to make everything seem like a huge deal.
To everyone else, read a little history. One of the properties of a 2-party system is that the parties are always in flux. The parties don’t have a permanent platform, only to bring into their platform whatever gets the most votes. If the country turns more liberal, the Republicans wouldn’t sit back and let things slide until they had 10 senate seats and 90 for the Democrats. They’d moderate themselves. And obviously the same for the Democrats.
Personally, I don’t think it’s to anyone’s advantage in the US to ever have the same party hold all 3 seats of government. I think that naturally leads to corruption, which is a partial reason for what happened Tuesday.
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Nov 09, 2006 @ 09:14:14
I see the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as a sign that Bush recognizes the position he’s in now and is willing to compromise. However, his speech about the man’s many great accomplishments didn’t show any signs that either one had admitted to any mistakes. But we can hope, moving forward, that bipartisan compromises will be made.
Predictions for the next 2 years:
1) Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue, troop levels will not decline.
2) Bush will not be impeached.
3) Minimum wage will be increased.
4) Tax cuts for the wealthy will be repealed.
5) Environmental statutes will be restored.
6) Electronic voting will be tightly regulated.
7) Gay marriage will neither be banned nor legalized.
9) Right wing media pundits will get louder and shriller as they realize how out of touch they are.