We Really Need That

The Elections of 2012 are over at last! It’s early yet but I want to memorialize how I feel before the reflections start to fade and the dull haze of normalcy obfuscates realities that ought to be faced.

Hopefully Democrats won’t gloat further alienating their fellow citizens on the right. It may be more important to be good winners than to be good losers. Not that I wish Republicans well, but the country does need a viable multi-party system, hopefully one with more than just two actively successful parties, and perhaps this election will help. Of the 48 percent that rejected Obama, at least 40 percent would have rejected him if he proved to be the second coming of Jesus and of those, at least 35 percent would have rejected any Democrat. That means that in this election, 35 percent wasted their votes. My night would have been triumphant if a meaningful part of the now disappointed 48 percent had used their votes meaningfully to support a new political party on a path towards electoral success. That didn’t happen. I think it needs to. The gridlock which has become the norm in federal legislative politics needs to be broken and broken on a structural basis, and that can best be accomplished through the introduction of multiple sources of legislative candidates, and hopefully, the generation of new political and economic paradigms.

Still, it was a night when misogyny, xenophobia, racism, homophobia and calumny lost and that’s healthy. They were rejected not only in the presidential and congressional elections, but also in a number of ballot initiatives, and that’s a hopeful sign, but not by much.

Both Democrats and Republicans in this last campaign embraced negativity and less than honest debate opting for appeals to emotion rather than reason with fear and hate as prime motivators. Now it remains to be seen whether on reflection, those who embraced those negative concepts will reject them, at least as non-productive (if not as immoral) and will develop positive and fruitful bases for their political opposition.

We really need that.

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