MannyIsGod
11-03-2004, 11:57 AM
I am hugely disapointed. I had anticipated a strong Kerry win up untill the poll numbers from Ohio started rolling in late last night. Over the past few weeks I had built up confidence that this country really had taken notice to the actions of President Bush over the past 4 years, and had decided that they were not the direction we wanted to take our country.
I became more and more pessemestic as I hit refresh on the Ohio numbers over and over again. I was like a crack addict who got a new rock everytime he hit F5. Sometimes Kerry would cut the margin down, but then within a few more reloads, Bush has built his lead back up. There was never any real hope of coming back in that state.
Then I grasped onto straws that Bush would avoid getting the needed 270 votes, or perhaps that he would once again fail to achieve the popular vote. Both of these happening would have given a strong push to reforming the electoral college. Neither happend. Bush will walk away with more than 270 electoral votes and has a comfortable lead over the entire country.
It was a complete loss in congress, where democrats got killed. The Texas redistricting led by evil fucktwad Tom Delay handed 5 seats to the GOP. While I am no fan of democrats, and there was no indication that control of the congress would change parties, I held out hope that if Bush was given 4 more year it would at least start off with 2 where he didn't have complete congressional backing. No dice.
Locally, the Via ATD passed and there were no real suprises in the races. In races where there were only libertarian cantidates against republican cantidates, the libertarian's did not do nearly as well as I had hoped. Not suprising, however. Libertarians subscribe to a basic theory that less is more and that's something San Antonioans have difficulty grasping.
Ballot initiatives across the country turned out horribly in my view. There is HUGE support for banning gay marriage everywhere, and only one marijuna prop actually passed. Montana voted to legalize it for medicinal purposes, with Oregon voting against the same proposition. Alaska voted against legalizing it all together. A victory for stem cell research did occour in California, where there will be a large amount of state funding poured into programs.
Overrall, the negatives outweight the positives for me in this election. I don't see Bush reforming many things domesticaly favorably for me, and I certainly don't see forgien policy changing at any point in time within the next 4 years. Perhaps with a republican controlled congress we will see some entitlement reform, but I am not holding my breath.
I put a lot of effort into making whatever impact I could have in this election. I could have done more, and should have. I think being surrounded by some incredibly passionate and intelligent people did lead me to see a victory where perhaps there was no victory to be had. Perhaps we did all we could nationwide and made this a closer race in someway. I don't know. I do know that I am in the middle of a disheartend crowd, and I hope that we're able to channel that into yet more passion and more conviction, but at the moment I don't know if that's going to happen.
We rode a wave of anger and frustration and that wave seems to be breaking upon itself.
This shit sucks.
I became more and more pessemestic as I hit refresh on the Ohio numbers over and over again. I was like a crack addict who got a new rock everytime he hit F5. Sometimes Kerry would cut the margin down, but then within a few more reloads, Bush has built his lead back up. There was never any real hope of coming back in that state.
Then I grasped onto straws that Bush would avoid getting the needed 270 votes, or perhaps that he would once again fail to achieve the popular vote. Both of these happening would have given a strong push to reforming the electoral college. Neither happend. Bush will walk away with more than 270 electoral votes and has a comfortable lead over the entire country.
It was a complete loss in congress, where democrats got killed. The Texas redistricting led by evil fucktwad Tom Delay handed 5 seats to the GOP. While I am no fan of democrats, and there was no indication that control of the congress would change parties, I held out hope that if Bush was given 4 more year it would at least start off with 2 where he didn't have complete congressional backing. No dice.
Locally, the Via ATD passed and there were no real suprises in the races. In races where there were only libertarian cantidates against republican cantidates, the libertarian's did not do nearly as well as I had hoped. Not suprising, however. Libertarians subscribe to a basic theory that less is more and that's something San Antonioans have difficulty grasping.
Ballot initiatives across the country turned out horribly in my view. There is HUGE support for banning gay marriage everywhere, and only one marijuna prop actually passed. Montana voted to legalize it for medicinal purposes, with Oregon voting against the same proposition. Alaska voted against legalizing it all together. A victory for stem cell research did occour in California, where there will be a large amount of state funding poured into programs.
Overrall, the negatives outweight the positives for me in this election. I don't see Bush reforming many things domesticaly favorably for me, and I certainly don't see forgien policy changing at any point in time within the next 4 years. Perhaps with a republican controlled congress we will see some entitlement reform, but I am not holding my breath.
I put a lot of effort into making whatever impact I could have in this election. I could have done more, and should have. I think being surrounded by some incredibly passionate and intelligent people did lead me to see a victory where perhaps there was no victory to be had. Perhaps we did all we could nationwide and made this a closer race in someway. I don't know. I do know that I am in the middle of a disheartend crowd, and I hope that we're able to channel that into yet more passion and more conviction, but at the moment I don't know if that's going to happen.
We rode a wave of anger and frustration and that wave seems to be breaking upon itself.
This shit sucks.