Obama Wins

It's 10:03 pm EST, and ABC News says Obama has 207 electoral votes. He needs 270 to win, and is bound to win California (55), Oregon (7), and Washington (11). That will give him a minimum of 280 EVs.

It's over. Obama has won.

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I am relieved. Earlier in the evening it looked closer than I expected, in Virginia, and in Indiana.

I am happy to see Shaheen win in NH, and, as a godless atheist scumbag, Dole lose in NC.

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Simply put, I thought that if McCain were elected this country would be effectively had the fork stuck in its ass -- further down the dark path, hopelessly far right-wing, hopelessly militaristic, nationalistic, reactionary, anti-intellectual, anti-science, soon to be bankrupt, corporations controlling absolutely everything, privacy at serious risk, perhaps even religious diversity, the Constitution even more of a ripped mess that it is after these last horrible eight years.

Obama at least represents hope. Some hope. I'm enormously proud that my country elected an African-American to the presidency. Frankly, I never thought I'd see it. A page has definitely turned.

But the US is a big ship and does not turn around easily. I thought Clinton & Gore represented hope in 1992, but they turned out to be a big disappointment and in may ways just more of the same -- run by corporations and their donations and their influence, overtly political at any cost, and self-indulgent to the point of self-destruction.

Every four years everyone thinks things are going to change big-time -- and yet things hardly change that much. A little forward, a little back. Why should this be any different?

I don't think the vast right-wing conspiracy (of course, it exists) will work any less hard during an Obama presidency. Can he hold all that off? He has the dignity and coolness to possibly do it. It won't be easy. It's not like we're out of any woods.

But Obama is clearly unique, like, I imagine, JFK was. Some things about him still worry me. His opposition to same-sex marriage, which surely he knows is an unjust position, is, I hope, based on political survival and thus reversible when the time is right. I'm disappointed at the extent to which he injects religion into his own attitude about governing, but perhaps that is only political survival too.

On health care, which is by far the most important issue to me, I think he is disappointing. I can't see him overcoming the huge corporate medical block. The number of uninsured will probably decrease under his presidency, but even he admits that not everyone will be covered. Single, childless, self-employed, pre-existing conditions, I fully expect to be one of them, and that angers me deeply.

Some of the things I saw in the election certainly make me worry about mankind, but I suppose all elections have been like this.

Anyway, I guess this is a start. Finally.