Reflections on the Election

I am surprised.

I am relieved.

I am pleased. .  .  .

As I think over the 2012 presidential election and the campaign that preceded it.

I am surprised that President Barack Obama won re-election.  

There was so much buildup by the media hustlers.  

They seemed to say Willard (Mitt) Romney had it in the bag.  

After all, Barack Hussein Obama .  .  .

• Is not a U. S. citizen.  
• Is a Socialist.
• Is a Communist.
• Is a Muslim.
• Is going to force your wife and daughters to have abortions.
• Is going to force your children to marry people of the same sex.
• Is going to take your guns away from you.

That’s what I’ve heard in South Carolina and on call-in shows.

So I went to bed Tuesday night assuming I’d wake up on the first day of the ascension of Mitt Romney to the presidential throne (in all seriousness).
And if South Carolina's vote were the vote of the nation, today would be that first day.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night, answering the call of nature.  While I was up, I checked the Internet to get the late word, and the word seemed to point to Obama.  I thought, “No.  That can’t be.”  Besides, it was ‘way too early. They were showing the President with only 154 electoral votes and Romney with 145.  After all, it takes 270 to win.

I woke up again, this time as much out of curiosity as from physical necessity.  This time, they were giving Obama 270 electorals and Romney 203.

The third time, a headline said, “Romney Concedes.”  Here, I thought we likely would have another A. D. 2000 debacle, with hanging chads and all that, with ballots in Ohio and Florida still being counted in the middle of Advent.

So, yes, in all honesty, I am surprised.

I am relieved at several points:

• There was no major challenge of the outcome.
• Romney family members who own stock in voting machines didn’t try to stuff the electronic ballot boxes.
• Deep-pocketed corporations -- approved by the Supreme Court -- and individuals spent billions in vain in their effort to buy the election.
• Karl Rove and associates didn’t have the success they had for eight years with George W.
• We will NOT have to wait weeks or months for results in the fashion of a Third World Country.
• We don’t face as much likelihood that Congress -- led by Paul Ryan -- will ransack the investments many of us have made for decades in the Social Security funds or destroy Medicare by farming out health care to corporate insurance companies.

I am pleased at several points:

• Religion became less an issue:

Mormon Mitt Romney was able to secure the GOP nomination despite his belonging to a “strange” religion.  
Some of us thought we had passed that point when John Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic president in 1960.  

Of course, many people firmly believe President Obama is a Muslim, despite his membership in a Christian church for a quarter century.  So when a for-real Muslim seeks the nomination, look out.

The Constitution, Article VI, Section 3, states: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” 

• We can hope race is no longer an issue.  If President Obama had been defeated this time, his election in 2008 might have been viewed as an aberration.  But perhaps his election a second time will change that outlook as we look back to 2012.
• Even though Hillary Clinton and Michele Bachmann lost out to men in their primary races, could it be that another wall has fallen and it soon will be possible for a woman -- maybe even my granddaughter -- to get the nomination and win the election for one of the major parties?  Adelaide R. Webb will be old enough in the 2044 election. She already has the chutzpah to take on all comers.