Aftermath

On election-day morning, I was sitting with some of the right wing blowhards in the Men’s Fitness room of the YMCA. As you may have guessed most of them are old, fat white guys who sit around and talk smack about everything and everybody. They complain about what’s wrong with the country and degrade women and anyone else who doesn’t agree with their BS. On this morning they were positively giddy: they had read the polls from Fox News and listened to Rush and all the other right wing pundit nut jobs; The president was going down, Mitt Romney had already written a victory speech and Hynes Convention Center was all decked out for a big Republican celebration. Guess what? It never happened, not even close. The networks called the election only half an hour later than ‘08 and the man who had won then, won again: Barack Obama, the first black man to be elected President of the United States had been re-elected much to the dismay and disbelief of those on the right. Those on the right wondered: how did this happen? Despite all the money that was poured into the process by Karl Rove and his minions, despite the ads that attempted to provoke fear and disillusion at the very thought of Obama getting a second term, despite their vain attempts to suppress voter registration, despite the finger pointing and blame when the US Embassy was attacked in Libya, despite the President’s poor performance in the first debate after which many predicted his demise, he got elected anyway. Why? How? Well boys and girls it’s really quite simple, the American public is a lot smarter than the right wing moonbats give us credit for. We are not the people who pay attention to the fear mongering ads that aired during the campaign. The ads about broken promises or the ones that say China will take us over because of the debt we owe them. We are not the people who are discouraged by voter suppression. It is our right to vote and nothing was going to stop that. They had hoped that by threatening to change the rules or by harassing us when we came to vote that we would choose to stay home rather than go through the trouble. It didn’t work because many stayed in line for hours determined to make their voices heard. The other thing that brought many voters to favor the President, were the outrageously negative statements made toward women by the right wing. I have never heard such insane or downright disgusting comments from American politicians toward women. I get the whole anti-abortion thing, but to suggest that getting pregnant by means of rape is ok as long as she has the child or to suggest that a woman who gets pregnant as a result of rape isn’t really rape is sick. Although it wasn’t the candidate who said this, the man who wanted to be vice president seemed to be in agreement. After that did Paul Ryan really think he had a chance to be just a stones throw from the Oval Office? The rage against women didn’t work either, it backfired big time. Women not only came out in droves for Obama, but there were 5, count them, 5 women elected to the Senate and one of those women is openly gay. There will be 20 women in the Senate come January. That’s nearly half of the Senators in Washington. I wonder how those good ole boys on the right are going to deal with that; and to think come 2017 they may have Hillary to deal with. The party of Lincoln (Honest Abe must be having fits watching these clowns) is beside itself trying to figure out what happened, they’re even coming up with absurd reasoning to try to explain everything: it was the super storm, or this is no longer America because nearly 75% of the minorities in this country supported the President. You’re half right fellas this is still our America, just not yours and that is why you lost and will continue to lose as long as you still live in your America. We are all Americans: men, women, gays, black, white, Hispanics and even you guys. So get over it. As for my friends at the Y, it was strangely quiet, still and empty. It was like the aftermath of a grand party where nobody came.

—James Shearer