The Short And The Long Of It

Barack Obama has won a second term as President of the United States. That's the short of it.

Onward to the long of it.

It happened about three hours ago as I start to write this. Mitt Romney, the rightist or moderate chameleon whose positions on things changed depending on the political ideology of the crowd to which he wanted to appeal, has conceded the election. Not all of the numbers are in, but Mr. Obama has garnered over two million votes (and counting) more than Mr. Romney and has secured 303 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to clinch the presidency.

To say that I'm relieved would be an overstatement. I rather expected this outcome in the face of Mr. Silver's prediction, but the fact is, I was rather hoping it wouldn't happen. Yes, a Romney victory would have put the United States on a collision course with fiscal disaster. Top down economics don't work, as has been AMPLY demonstrated over the last two years. But despite the economic turmoil that I, and more than 300 million of my fellow Americans, would have had to endure for at least the four years that the disaster of a Romney administration would have been, we are now faced with the prospect of civil war.

I've talked about this before, obviously, but as of this writing, it remains to be seen if my crystal ball has any kind of accuracy or has the vision of an individual with macular degeneration. I'm rather hoping the latter. But I'm still expecting the former,

That said, I have a certain amount of hope that a "civil war" may be far more limited than I was previously predicting The two most conservative fucktards, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, the former saying that women were protected from pregnancy in a "legitimate rape" and the latter who said that pregnancies resulting from rape were "god's will" were both defeated. While Akin's opponent was an incumbant (and a woman), Mourdock beat the Republican (although mostly moderate) incumbant Dick Lugar in the Primaries, making Mourdock the person to beat. The GOP thought the Indiana seat was a "slam dunk".

Until he shot himself in the mouth with his "God's Will" statement and turned the slam-dunk into an air-ball.

As a result of this, the right-wing actually LOST ground in the Senate (Dem's gained 3, Republicans lost 3). The House remains in the hands of the right, but it may be with a bit less of a majority than they had (232 now versus 241 before the election with some races still to be called). That number may change, but the GOP will retain control either way.

Now, the fact is Obama won both the popular vote and the electoral college. That's a clear majority. The margin of victory was over two million voters (at least as of last count) more for Obama. Democracy at it's finest. Yes, the country is divided, little will change in Congress, the right-wing will, at the very least, continue to stand in the way of anything being done and call it "defending the United States". But at least the status quo didn't get WORSE.

And yet, there's still the possibility that it will. The GOP is mostly white and stupid. And the pundits on the right have not lost their zealotry over defending what they think is the "American way".

But what way is that?

Bill O'Reilly said it best when he allowed that Obama had won the election (this from the "fair and balanced" news station!):

“The white establishment is now the minority,” O'Reilly said. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

So it appears that the Right-wing is all about white power, the belief that women and minorities all "want things" and are against democracy. The world changes. Shit happens. You don't whine about the "white establishment" becoming the "minority". At the VERY least you say, "Things change, shit happens and now we deal with it like an adult."

So because of statements like O'Reilly, the reactions of the pundits on the "fair and balanced" station to the news that Romney had lost and the prevalence of white supremacist groups in the United States (who have the unmitigated GALL to call themselves "Christians"!!), I still think there will be violence. The right-wing doesn't believe in democracy. And when I say the right-wing, I mean the extremists in the Tea Party and others who talk about "taking back the U.S." in defiance of democracy and the will of the majority.

But I MAY be wrong about the civil war. At least the scope of it.

This is because of the speed of the election decision. There seems to be no question that Obama won. There was a complete lack of controversy over the voting process (although there were some reports of fraud, but it was reportedly biased toward Romney and NOT Obama), despite the fact there was a lot of potential for election-day disaster. There was no prolonged "hanging chad" decision to make (even if Florida still has yet to figure out who the fuck won - in THIS election, it makes no damn difference).

That clarity of decision, the decisiveness of the voting and even the two million MORE who voted in favor of Obama makes justifying an insurrection EXTREMELY hard. Not impossible, of course. The delusional who hate non-whites won't let little things like democracy or the will of the majority stand in their way. But they'll find it hard to convince the rank and file extremists - the ones who are "armchair haters" who wouldn't DARE say what they spew on the Internet to ANY stranger's face - who MIGHT join in if it appeared to be well planned, well thought out and well coordinated to actually get off their asses and start shooting people they don't like.

I don't see that kind of thing happening on a large scale.

Now assuming a civil war doesn’t start and there is no violence, I'll hide behind the excuse that my prediction was based on the likelihood that things would be ugly during the election. I was surprised that it went as well as it did and also very surprised at the margin and decisiveness of the Obama victory. There was a lot that could have gone wrong that didn't. If that keeps violence at bay, I'll be more than pleased. Even if we have four more years of the same (Which we won't. I expect as things get slowly better, the people will see the Tea Party retards for the repressive assholes they are and vote them out of office during the mid-term elections.), I'll be happy with that as long as we don't have Americans killing Americans wholesale because traitors can't handle democracy when it doesn't go their way.

If one can take anything away from this it's that (gerrymandering aside) the American voters aren't ALL extremists. There appears to be a sufficient number of voters who know that balance is best. As dysfunctional as the extremists on the right make our congress, we all know that moderation is best. A rubber-stamping congress is never a good thing for the country. I'm satisfied that the situation won't get THAT MUCH worse, at least not on Capitol Hill.

As for Shit-Kicker Hills, Texas, well, let's just say I expect they're not retreating. As Palin urged, I suspect some folks there are reloading. Time will tell if I'm right about that.