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Supporters of Democratic candidate Barak Obama
were charged with energy in the final days of the campaign, while the McCain camp settled into sullen defiance. The polls were running decidedly in Obama’s favor. He led 51-42 in an average of twelve national polls. Even Fox news had to grudgingly concede a 3 point lead for Obama. They were the only national media organization that had him leading by less than 5 points, (of course) but their time is over. They will no longer be the voice of the powers that be. There’s a new power rising in America now, and it’s not red or blue or purple, but a rainbow of diversity. We’re finally free of the executive yoke that has saddled the nation with war, shame, corruption, back breaking debt and economic ruin these last eight years. Free at last, or nearly so. Bush and Cheney still have 90 days for mischief., but at least we can get ready to roll up our sleeves for the job ahead. Only first we have to clear away the rubble.
Electoral Roundup
It was business as usual in the red state of Kentucky, the first to be called for McCain. Offset only by Vermont in the early going, McCain posted an 8-3 lead in electoral votes. It
was to be the last lead he would hold on election night, as Obama began to surge ahead 81-39 by 5pm PST and then 102-45 when the keystone state of Pennsylvania was called at about 5:30. McCain had tried desperately
to lever the state out of the blue column, but flush with their world series win, Philadelphia voters turned out in massive numbers and virtually guaranteed the state for the Dems.
As the Northeast weighed in, the lead extended to 175-70. There were four crucial states McCain had to hold in order to prevent a rout: VA, FL, OH and NC. By 6pm Obama was leading in
three of the four, with only Virginia holding red for McCain. The former heart of the confederacy would eventually turn blue. Speculation about a democratic move in Georgia proved fruitless, however, when that state
was called at a little after 6pm PST. McCain narrowed the lead to 175-115. But moments later one of the key battleground states fell to Obama, leading 52%-43% when Ohio was called at 6:20pm pushing his total to 195
electoral votes. It was all over but the shouting. Ohio, added to the solid west coast, would put Obama over the top. Nothing else mattered, but many more states would fall to the blue column before the night was
over. Former red state New Mexico fell at 6:30pm with a strong Latino vote that will be very decisive in the years ahead. As soon as the polls closed in California, the major networks called the state, and with it
the election, for Barak Obama.
All of this was no surprise to me, as I predicted Barak Obama would be elected president way back in December of 2007 as I wrote one of those perennial “predictions” articles that everyone has fun with at New Year’s. Back then Hillary Clinton was deemed the inevitable candidate destined to win the nomination by most
analysts, but I felt there was just too much yesterday’s news surrounding her campaign. Obama was something altogether different. I perceived something in the man that I knew the nation so desperately needed,
a core of inner calm, a heritage that saw him embody all the stories about opportunity and upward mobility in America—the land where any man can be whatever he aspires to become. I saw a keen intelligence and
polished presentation in his speech, a poise and confidence that was uplifting. He could finish a complete sentence in a thoughtful and meaningful way, and that alone is a dramatic change compared to what we have
seen in the bumbling, inarticulate dullardry of Bush these last eight years.
But above all, he renounced fear. He spoke about change and hope in a way that made me feel we just might still have a chance in
this country. Yes, I know these words and slogans are perennial political fare, but when I listened to Obama, watched him speak, move, work a crowd, I came to believe in that hope again, and the real promise of
change if enough of us stood behind a man like this.
The differences between Obama and Bush were so striking that it was impossible not to pay attention to this fresh young candidate who now finds himself at a nexus point in our history
that will decide the fate of this nation for decades to come. Few men have had the honor and awesome responsibility that is now handed to him by the voters, for each one passed back a small measure of the hope he
engendered in them when they cast their ballots this year. That’s a lot to have and hold, and a lot to live up to. So our work is far from over. We must continue to stand behind him the whole way through if we
are ever to recover from the disaster of Bush and Cheney. Obama said it best: “This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change.”
The hope this
victory has engendered will make all the difference as we contemplate where we have been and where we must now go as a nation. More than anything now, we first need the oratory of hope and the call to union that both candidates gave us at the conclusion of this election. The character of John McCain and his great love of the country he has served all his life was never more evident when he conceded the election to Obama. His call to all his supporters to rally in support of the new president, as he will, was more than an exercise of good manners, it was a national necessity now. The blue states can’t rebuild this nation alone. We need the red states too. It will take all of us, united in a common effort, to prevail.
What can we do now that we finally have someone in the White House to set a new course and begin a new agenda for this nation?
First we have to recover from all this.
We have to start building something new in this country, and it won’t be easy. We have proven one thing with this election, that we are a nation where everyone matters, not just those with a gated mansion, five cars and a once thick portfolio getting thinner by the hour. Our voices were finally heard, from every quarter, in a rainbow of ethnicity, diversity and economic status. We count. We matter. We are this nation, not the banks, the corporations who employ us, or the politicians who purport to represent us. We the people,
are the United States of America. It isn’t a place, a political definition, or even an idea so nobly enshrined in our constitution. It’s us--all of us, red, blue and purple. We need everyone--the soccer moms, the Joe Sixpacks, the evangelicals, the NASCAR crowd. It’s going to take an effort from all of us to get through the hard years ahead.
The Challenge
The legacy of the Bush-Cheney years was so dark that I decided to remove it from this article to focus instead on the hope we must now begin with. (You
can follow the link above for a verbal and pictorial retrospective on the Bush presidency). The challenge we face will be one that requires us to recreate an economy based on value and real productive goods, and not
one based on speculation and rampant consumption. That is our first goal, but it may mean that many aspects of the old economy must first wither and fall away before the new growth can begin. In many ways, the
collapse on Wall Street is acting a bit like a cleansing forest fire, destroying the old to make way for the new. But there will be pain, and resistance to change, as we have already seen how the rich investor class
still seems preoccupied only with the safety of their gold, and the timely allocation of their salaries and bonus money.
The economy is now firmly tipped into recession. A commercial collapse, following in the wake of the financial collapse, is inevitable. Sales are sluggish, as consumer confidence is now
at a 40 year low. Layoffs are gathering momentum, and this will get much worse. The banks continue to hold cash, and credit is going to be very hard for anyone but the Angel Gabriel to get in the months and years
ahead. In short, the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. By late 2009 our dollars, stubbornly holding their value now because of the credit crunch, will start to erode away and lose much more of
their already anemic purchasing power.
All the billions and billions in digital cash being “injected” into the economy, (at the wrong end I might add), will eventually cause a debasement of the currency. 2009 could
be the most difficult year in the crisis precipitated by the Bush-Cheney years. If 2008 was the year of collapse, 2009 will be the year of smoke and ash. We’ll still be choking on everything Bush and Cheney
did to the nation and, if the defeated right simply hardens into attack mode on all their media channels with the intent of blaming it all on Barak Obama, we will never prevail. This new president will
face the most difficult job of any since FDR. He will need our stalwart support.
The sad thing about our present situation is this—with all the billions committed to pay off banks in the last months of
the Bush Presidency, what will be left for the rest of us, for health care that is always promised but never arrives, for jobs programs, for education, for the strapped homeowners waiting for the Sheriff to nail the
eviction notice on their front door? What will be left for new energy programs that will be so desperately needed?
We have been lulled by the quieting down of oil prices in late 2008. The barrel price has come down for two reasons—slowing global economies and speculators and investors, facing
tough margin calls, now forced to unwind the highly leveraged positions. Oil futures are an easy sell. But nothing has really changed about our energy situation. We’re going to lose 6.8 million barrels of oil
production per day in the world’s great fields. Saudia Arabia, the world’s largest producer, outputs about 9 million barrels per day. By that math we will need to find a new Saudi Arabia every 18
months to offset the annual depletion rate from here on out, and that will just not happen. So the gasoline prices will be back up over $3 in short order, and then move on to $4 per gallon and beyond. Be
prepared for that.
GM, Chrysler and Ford, so disastrously unaware of the need for thrifty, gas saving cars, continued to crank out muscle trucks and SUVs until they drove themselves to the edge of bankruptcy.
Now they stand in the long line waiting for bail-out money…but what happened to the know-how, innovation and amazing industrial capacity of this nation? The auto industry stopped making cars in 1941, and
re-tooled to make Sherman tanks, half-tracks and a host of other vehicles in a matter of months. We need that same level of commitment, urgency and effort now. Our entire way of life needs re-tooling. It can no
longer be about easy terms with nothing down and no payments until whenever at the one day sales in the shopping malls. The days of loose lending and easy credit are over. People have gone from flipping houses to
flipping burgers for a living in just a few short years. Time for something new.
The next 90 days will see the Obama administration beginning to vet its cabinet appointees and flesh out the new
executive branch. Meanwhile, Bush & Cheney will be shredding documents, erasing tapes, and finishing up the distribution of public funds to all their corporate friends—the looting of the treasury at our
expense.
James Kunstler ended his pre-election article with this sober assessment: “Much of the real work of the next president will be guiding a transition out of obsolete habits,
practices, and expectations that we must shed whether we like it or not. The painful downscaling of the financial sector, from a bloated 20+ percent of the US economy back to something more in the 5 percent range,
is only the first of these agonies. The transition away from suburbia -- our tragic misallocation of resources in an infrastructure for daily life with no future -- will be even more harrowing because of the
psychology of previous investment, which will provoke a misguided effort to sustain the unsustainable, and squander our dwindling resources in the process. I reject the label ‘gloom-and-doomer’ where
these difficult transitions are concerned. There's a lot about the way we live now that is disgusting, degrading, demoralizing, and socially toxic -- from our suicidal diet of processed fat, salt, and corn syrup
byproducts to the spiritually punishing everyday realm of the highway strip to the fantastic loneliness and alienation of a people made hostage to a TV-consumer nexus of corporate colonialism. Were done with that.
We just don't know it yet. Mr. Obama may not know it, either, but he is a trustworthy soul to hold our hands as we enter this unknown territory.”
I, too, reject the label of the doomsayer where
reporting on the last 8 years has been concerned. Seeing reality the way it is, and pointing it out amid the endless stream of nonsense broadcast by the media, is a daunting, but necessary act of intelligence. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing, to say nothing. Speaking out against the egregious offenses of the Bush administration was, for me, an act of civil and moral necessity. Now it’s time for the “yet more” of life as we face down the hard work that comes part & parcel with our hope for change. We prayed for change, embraced the hope, believed enough to make it so. As Barak Obama so rightly proclaimed: “Yes we can!”
Now let’s get started.
Article By: John Schettler, November, 2008
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