After careful consideration of voting patterns, exit polls, current projections and states won – collected from a variety of sources, the publishing staff at Ideas and Revolution is declaring Barack Obama the next President of the United States. Congratulations President-Elect Obama!
The inauguration cannot happen fast enough…
Editor’s Note – Matthew wanted to call it before the mainstream media and who am I to say no? Looks like Obama will be a big winner and I now can relax. This historic election is only a start and not the end…
It’s Election Day finally and hope all my readers have or will vote today. Please take a second and let me know who you picked for President by voting in my poll.
This is also an open thread to comment about your experiences and feelings on this Election Day.
Are you worried your candidate will not win or not at all?
Please share if you had any polling place problems today…
Every Congressional race is open for discussion also and do you think the Democrats will get to 60 in the Senate and would it be good or bad?
All readers are invited to join me in my chat room (I will be there all day and into the night) to discuss the election as it unfolds in real time and just need to log into any popular IM client you already use when go to the Ideas and Revolution Meebo room.
Election Day is tomorrow so it’s time to vote or shut up! I hope no one thinks there vote will not count or if an Obama supporter think he has it in the bag. We need everyone to go vote and change the direction this country is heading. An Obama administration would only be the first step and not an end.
I took Obama’s advice to take the day off or in my case took advantage of the Library I work at will be closed and the flexible scheduling at my night job to clear the day. I will be camped out in front of the TV and on my laptop waiting for the outcome after voting. Someday, when the people demand election reform maybe Election Day will be a proper federal and state holiday for everyone.
Please check out this voting checklist to help you plan before you vote tomorrow…
What I would add to the checklist is to bring photo ID even if your state does not require it and more so if you are Hispanic or a minority. Really bring it to your polling place if you are in redneck country for God’s sake. Remember, do not wear or display anything that indicates who you are voting for when going to your polling place.
I am big on the idea if you have kids to let them skip school and have them go with you to vote. Kids need to be shown about participating in a democracy and no better way then letting them see you vote which will carry over into their adult life. African-American voters who will be voting for Obama this obviously would even be more important since this will be a historic election for them.
I will bring my cell phone with me which has a built in webcam to record my voting experience and any problems in or around my polling place but I expect none. I may post the video so look out for that tomorrow here on my blog. It appears that New York state does not allow public displaying of marked ballots but we will see about that.
I admit have not watched much of the Republican National Convention being held in the twin cities but like I said in a previous post would just be hearing the same speeches of the last eights years. The Republican party is just not in a state of change.
What I have seen has made me kinda sad. The Republican convention’s non ending theme is we are the red, white, and blue party of God fearing patriots. The problem is when I look at the crowd at the less then capacity convention seating area is that it’s all white faces. I heard someone on the radio say that on day one out of a crowd of over 6,000 there were only 36 non-white faces counted! I hope none of the non-whites were Native Americans because on day two the gentlemen giving the opening prayer mentioned something about “God gave us America…”. Worse, the attendees seem to be disproportionally people of advanced age. On day three when Sarah Palin gave her speech she must have felt right at home since the crowd must have looked like a snow covered landscape from her native Alaska.
CNN to their credit or not, has zoomed in on every non-white face they could find on the floor to try to make it not look so bad.
Only the eight original Republican candidates running for President until McCain won out were less diverse then this crowd since all of them were older well off white men. Republicans still sometimes refer to themselves as the party of Abe Lincoln but we all know that has not been the case since the civil rights era.
In contrast when I watched the Democrat National Convention last week the crowd was as diverse as our great country really is in the real world. The people in attendance looked as a whole no different then the people I see when walk down the streets in my hometown of Buffalo – white, black, brown, yellow, red, older, younger, straight, gay, men and women. The Democrat candidates that had ran for the Presidential nomination were no less diverse.
I fail to see why “America” would want to keep Republicans in office who simply couldn’t possibly relate to them. America needs Barack Obama and the Democrats to win back the oval office but I think maybe the Republicans need to lose just as much. Maybe in defeat they will look at themselves and realize they need to adapt to this rapidly changing world and become more like America of today. I think the Republicans would be well served to go back to their roots and became the party of fiscal responsibility, individual rights, and of Abe Lincoln once again.
Barack Obama stepped it up to another level in his party’s nomination acceptance speech. He appears to be maturing and adopting before our eyes as he marches toward filling the shoes of the office of the President. Obama looked brilliant as he was clear what he stands for and what changes America needs. I really liked the part where he basically called out McCain to bring it on.
A couple of other related comments…
-While watching the speech on CNN I noticed the graphic that gave the date of the upcoming first Obama-McCain debate. This campaigning already has gone on forever and we are still a month away from the first Presidential debate?
-I think as part of election and campaign reform we should not allow the candidates to announce or start to raise money until the November before the election. This would have the effort of compacting the primary season also. A shorter campaign cycle means more candidates with less need to raise as much money which results in less influence by special interests.
-I have to ask considering the campaign season has been going on for so long – How do we have so many undecided voters still? There is a sharp contrast between the candidates so it can’t be to hard to make a decision. Are they holding out to be paid by someone for their vote? I decided was going to vote for ever won between Obama and Hillary as soon as seen the weak Republican lineup.
On a related note I did spend some cash and ordered this cool Obama for President t-shirt on the left from the official website store but am still waiting on it. What do you think of it? Sweet huh?
After careful consideration of voting patterns, exit polls, current projections and states won – collected from a variety of sources, the publishing staff at Ideas and Revolution is declaring Barack Obama the next President of the United States. Congratulations President-Elect Obama!
Looks like Obama will be a big winner and I now can relax. This historic election is only a start and not the end…
