I'll be sleeping through this election, though it won't be easy. Soon after I awake, the US will have a new president, Kentucky might have a new senator, and Indiana might turn blue. I expect to feel a little like Rip Van Winkle, waking up into a New Day.
As I write this post, it is nighttime and pouring rain outside. On the other side of the world, the polls have been open in Kentucky and Indiana (where I most recently lived before coming to China) for the last five hours. Those same polls won't close until 6 pm there, 7 am tomorrow here.
So while I (and my fellow ex-pats) sleep, the US will be making history. We will either awake to a breath of history-making fresh air in the White House, or to an ill wind bringing four more years of the same-old, same-old to the executive branch.
When I left the States in late August, John McCain had not yet announced his perplexing choice of a running mate and Barack Obama and Joe Biden had only just officially become the Democratic candidates. While I spent my first few days here getting oriented to my new job and surroundings, Obama was continuing the surge toward the White House he had started well before the Democratic convention, and McCain was making the first of several missteps that most observers expect will cost him and the GOP the election.
Oh, and the US economy went down the crapper.
It's been interesting to watch from over on this side of the world. Insulated as I am from American TV and radio, whatever news I get comes through the Internet. (I didn't buy a shortwave radio until just a couple of weeks ago, not that I expect to learn much from it.)
My sources are varied, ranging from MSM to blogs like this one, but I am grateful that I do not have to listen to (or hear about) rightwinger TV and radio "pundits" decrying Obama and praising McCain. Instead, I can read about it. Believe me, it removes a lot of the sting, and in fact makes them more like the buffoons they really are.
McCain prostituted himself to the wingers in his party, while trying to convince everyone else he wasn't another George Bush. Uh-huh. He scrambled around, looking like he was "doing something" about the financial crisis, but his act was "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Palin, the well-coiffed attack dog, made a mockery of herself by failing to appear even vaguely intelligent on national TV, not once but several times.
Already on the ropes, McCain and Palin (with their Greek chorus of wingnut congresspersons and media whores) then tried the race card, the religion card, the terrorism card, the socialist card, the taxation card, the un-American card, until they ran through their whole deck of lies and slanders. None of them worked with the vast majority of voters. So much for that "campaign strategy" -- Americans are smarter than the GOP believes.
While McPalin strutted on the stage, Obama was poised, erudite, calm, and yes, presidential. If the GOP had had a candidate even remotely as good as Obama, they might have had a chance this year.
While I've never been a big fan of the Republican Party, in these last two decades it has devolved into a quasi-theocratic, jingoistic collection of clones sharing one tiny brain. While there are certainly smart, moderate Republicans, where the fuck were they while W. and his band brought the world's only remaining superpower practically into receivership? Why did it take the sinking McCain-Palin campaign to convince them to see the light and jump ship? While I appreciate their willingness (and bravery) to endorse and vote for Obama, ultimately we needed their intellect and wisdom well before fall 2008. The Democrats didn't seem to have it in them to temper the doctrinaire policies of the wingers these past eight years. Maybe if the moderate Republicans had had a little more backbone during Bush's first four years, the country would be in less of a mess than it is now.
This campaign has been at once divisive and unifying. That in itself is something for the history books. Palin and her ilk tried to divide the US into pro-America and un-America -- Us and Them. While her groupies may have lapped it up, no one else did. With the economy falling apart, voters instead wanted positive, forward-looking ideas. Obama has that vision: there is only one America, and if everyone works together, the country will emerge from these crises as strong as it ever was.
That's a powerful message, more convincing than accusing someone of being an unAmerican, socialist pal of domestic terrorists, who (psst!) may be, might be, possibly (ssh!) a Muslim.
The new president, whoever it ends up being, has a huge job -- actually, several huge jobs -- ahead of him. So does Congress, which is as much to blame for our current financial, military, diplomatic and constitutional messes as W. and the GOP are. Bush had a complacent, rubber-stamping Congress on his side for six years. Together, they brought the USA practically to its knees. The voters threw some of those bums out in 2006. I hope that they will be smart enough to throw even more out today -- starting with the jokers in the White House. I'll sure sleep easier.