Uh, the problem is, I was in a red state. Our red voters came out at a rate of 80% in some precincts . . . and 1/3 of them voted for Obama.
LS, I want to say that I have followed your posts during the past couple of weeks and have been buoyed by your optimism when everywhere else one looked, it was doom and gloom. Thank you.
In my heart of hearts, I was prepared for Obama to win, but I thought it would be very close and I thought it would be because there were more of them than there were of us. I didn’t anticipate the massive number of GOP defectors.
I had trouble sleeping all night, mulling over in my mind what possibly could have gone wrong given the reports of massive turnout in red precincts and all I could come up with was the “reverse Bradley effect”. Instead of Obama and Murtha’s remarks about people being clingers, racists and rednecks angering GOP voters, it appears that the remarks shamed them. Somehow they felt absolved of the charges by pulling the Obama lever. McCain has his share of detractors in the GOP (I’m among them), but by and large I’d think those people, who don’t think McCain is conservative enough, would never pull the lever for O.
And you can’t underestimate the anti-Bush sentiment, not only among Democrats, but among Republicans as well.
Despite the fact that I love Palin and think she knocked herself out, there was a factor there. I saw it among my own family members who were fine with McCain, but the fact that McCain was old and Palin was only a heartbeat away from being CIC worried them. They liked her as a person, but didn’t think she was qualified. That gave cover to a lot in the GOP who really wanted to vote for Obama, but didn’t want to come out and say it was to prove they weren’t racist.
Lastly, the slowing economy has everyone terrified. When people are scared, they look to Big Brother. It was the perfect storm to help Democrats.
And last, but not least, Obama ran a great campaign. We kept waiting for him to wilt under pressure and he did not. To be sure, he was never seriously challenged by the media, but no Democrat candidate will ever be challenged, so it’s wasted breath to complain about that. It won’t change. He had the money to frame the race very early and he did. He was able to run all kinds of touchy feely ads for weeks with no response from McCain. This kind of money advantage will never occur again.
Republicans have to pick themselves up out of the ash heap and look to the future. First step will be bringing the defectors back into the fold, so finding out what drove them out will be very important.
If you have any ideas on concrete ways to help with the going forward process, please share.
Two questions for you: 1) How long will the Obama honeymoon last until the Clintons start making a play for party leadership? She has to get him out of the way NOW if she has any thought at all of running in 2012. He has to be severely weakened for her to get away with challenging him in the 2012 primary.
2) Do you think this many Republicans would have voted for Hillary if she had been running?