A very sad day for America. Exit polls showed that most voters based their vote on “change”, and they went massively for Obama. But did they really know what “change” Obama plans for them?

Obama talked in his victory speech of trying to bring together Republicans and Democrats, but is this an instance of being able to fool half the people all the time? With a Democrat majority in the House, 44 Republican Senators (assuming Coleman, Stevens, and Gordon Smith hang on to win) may be all that stand between turning America into a weakened Marxist paradise–the dream of Putin and Chavez and Ahmadinejad.

Obama skated by on platitudes about change, and was never really challenged on his past by the MSM, which were all too eager to cover up for him. The Democrat-created banking crisis hit at exactly the right moment for the voters to blame Bush–McCain was leading in the polls until the banking crisis hit. Bush himself was extremely weak on this issue–he blamed “greed” and “Wall Street”, and gave Paulson excessive power, but never used the “bully pulpit” to fix the blame where it belonged, on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Democrats who enabled them to bankrupt the mortgage system by forcing banks to make unsound loans. McCain should have hammered the Democrats for this from the day the banking crisis first hit, but he wanted to be a “bipartisan statesman” and “problem solver” rather than a politician–so he lost the election and saved the economy–for now.

Perhaps, in hindsight, Romney as VP could have saved the election for McCain–he could have better explained causes and solutions for the financial crisis on the campaign trail than Palin, and prevented voters from seeking some vacuous “change” whose only virtue was not being George W. Bush. But it’s not clear whether he would have lost votes based on Evangelical revolt against his Mormon religion.

I don’t blame Palin for this–she is a true reformer, a true conservative, and she probably does have a bright future ahead of her. She is very knowledgeable on energy issues and issues concerning Alaska, but she was not prepared for MSM interviews and attacks. In he RNC speech, she said she was not seeking their approval, then went and sought it anyway, not realizing that they would deliberately try to destroy her. The Palin choice looked great in late August, when the country was reeling from $4/gallon gasoline, and Drill, Baby, Drill was a good idea.
But when major banks started going under, and all Bush could propose was $700 billion in bailouts while blaming “Wall Street greed”, McCain’s attacks against “socialism” rang hollow.

Now, what will Obama do? Will he suddenly be faced with a recession, possibly an international crisis forecast by Vice President Biden, and suddenly veer toward a pragmatic center? Or will he remain true to his Ayers/Alinsky/Pelosi roots, and try to impose nationalized health care, socialism, union bullying, appeasement to dictators, stifling of conservative speech, abortion on demand, while squandering America’s energy resources (oil, coal, nuclear) and leaving America at the mercy of its enemies?

If Obama veers to the center, he could have a successful Presidency, similar to that of Bill Clinton post-1994, but he would have to keep the House Democrats in check. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If Obama tries to implement what he campaigned on, his first two years will look like a mixture of Carter and Hoover, and voters will probably realize that they unleashed a monster, look nostalgically at George W. Bush and John McCain, and Obama might set himself up for a re-run of 1994 in 2010, . The question would then become–would the GOP have recruited enough credible House and Senate candidates to take back Congress, and how much damage will be done, and can it be undone?

Steve Z on November 5, 2008 at 10:25 AM