obramney

I avoided writing this article before the election...though i might have given in to temptation yesterday, had my internet not gone out (lingering hurricane aftereffects). I didn't want to write this before, because i felt like i had drunk the Obama kool-aid, and didn't want to base an article simply on my own desires or agenda...particularly with something as nebulous as national politics.
But i gotta say, that Romney fella genuinely scared me. I found myself torn over my country's response to him. On the one hand, i was proud that we had advanced so far on the path of pluralism, that a whole lot of middle America actually embraced a mormon candidate. On the other hand, there was a part of me that desperately wanted a much larger part of the conversation to be along the lines of "A mormon? In our highest office, a MORMON???" This had little to do with my feelings on religion, but rather that it felt like progressives were being hoisted by our own petard. That people like me who had so long preached acceptance and tolerance, had succeeded perhaps too well.
Ironically, there is a touch of intolerance in my own sentiments here...but a touch that might be justified. All religious texts have embarrassing, regressive tenets, but mormonism might outdo 'em all. And i'm not even talking about the magic underwear - i don't know of any other religion so fundamentally based on racism and sexism. The fact that mormon scriptures aren't ancient makes them perhaps even more dangerous, as devotees might take a more literal view of words written by a founder whose very existence isn't a bit lost in the shrouds of time. Governor Romney was once a high-ranking official of a church with a modern history of violent, bloody intolerance...and a lot of people chose to not be bothered by that, either through ignorance or misplaced idealism.
All that aside...is there anyone who thought we'd see a mormon major-party presidential candidate before a jew or a non-believer? I am at once proud of, and horrified by, my fellow americans.
If i tell you that i was puzzled by those who thought Obama hadn't earned a second term...is that just my hippie, progressive, one-world idealism? Facts can be slippery in this kind of debate, but is it not basically true that his first term brought the following:
-The end of an ill-advised war (like there's any other kind)
-The saving of the american automotive industry
-The death of the world's #1 terrorist
-The implementation of socialized medicine, an idea so "radical" that every other industrial nation in the world embraced it long ago
-The first President in history to support gay marriage (this is one of those things that seems progressive, but isn't - specifically, it's progressive in the little picture, but not the big one)
The only major black mark against him is debt and deficit levels that are usually only seen at the end of republican administrations. But how fair is it to lay that at his feet? When he came into office, the american economy was in its second-worst crisis EVER. Pundits and prognosticators saw only worsening gloom. Four years later...whatever else has happened, do you hear people making allusions to the Great Depression anymore?
As an alternative to all that, we were offered a predatory Wall Street plutocrat? You remember them, the ones who led us INTO this economic disaster?
For most progressives, nothing may ever match the elation of Obama's first election (except of course for that day in 2024 when we inaugurate our first agnostic, bisexual, asian-american, female President). Yet in many ways, this second term was the real prize all along. A progressive person of conscience and integrity with his last election behind him. Four years during which he doesn't have to play it safe. Four years in which he doesn't have to court anyone.
Apropos of nothing, what is it with me and swing states? I spent my childhood in Ohio, my youth in Pennsylvania, and my early adulthood in Florida.
Anyway...the dust has settled, and i cast my vote for the first winning President of my life (given my record, i was almost tempted to go the other way). I missed the last election when i was called out of state to help my mom. Before that, there was a little Nader, and a whole lot of Perot.
For a jaded cynic, it feels kind of nice.