Embarrassing Post-Election Reactions

Thankfully the election of 2012 is finally over. Not only did President Obama win the popular vote, but he also won the Electoral College by a significant margin. To the surprise of the online conspiracy theorists living in fantasyland, the earth did not fall off its axis, and the sun and moon continued to function as regularly scheduled.

The President won despite the scare tactics employed by most conservatives on talk radio and the not so fair and balanced coverage by a particular cable news channel. The fear mongering and billions of dollars in negative campaign ads were not enough to convince the majority of Americans to vote for the other candidate.

History will prove that the election of 2012 was a repudiation of the radical conservative agenda.

Excuses, Excuses

The embarrassing post-election reactions from some people who chose not to vote for the President are not surprising by any stretch of the imagination. We saw a level of ugliness after the 2008 election and those same hate filled people feel even more embolden to do and say the foulest things about the President of the United States. It is okay for people to disagree with the President on policy issues, but it is not okay for people to keep trying to discredit the man as a legitimate American, or categorize him as a socialist, communist, Muslim who hates the country.

The excuses for why the other candidate loss or why the President won have already began to be nauseating. The post-election comedy show commenced shortly after it was obvious that President Obama had enough electoral votes to secure his second term in office. It is laughable to see and hear conservative prognosticators twisting and turning poll numbers, continually trying to figure out how in the world the man they have so much disdain for could be re-elected.

The GOP is blaming the loss on the liberal media, African Americans, Hispanics, young people, single women, homosexuals, voter fraud, and free stuff. It is everybody’s fault but the guy who lost the election.

The GOP can continue to make excuses for their loss and ignore the fact that their idiotic and reckless policies are the reason people did not vote for their candidate. Rational thinking people did not buy into the conservative narrative of doom and gloom politics.

More than Just the Economy

The other candidate and his advisors could not possibly expect to win by just telling people how bad of a job his opponent has done and how bad the economy is without offering any plausible solutions. The one question he was never able to answer during the entire campaign was “how?”

For instance, how was he going to create 12 million jobs, but in the same breath say that government does not create jobs?

The answer certainly is not more tax breaks for the “job creators” because we have seen over the last twelve or so years how that theory has worked for us. The trickle never has and never will make it down from the top.

As it turned out, the economy was not the only issues Americans cared about. When a person takes hard lined, unpopular stances on so many social issues, how could expect the same people he demonized throughout the election to vote for him?

Voters did not know where he stood on so many issues because his position seemed to change with the direction of the blowing wind. Maybe it was those secretly recorded 47% percent remarks to a group of wealthy campaign donors. Maybe it was his willingness to defund PBS and Planned Parenthood, but no mention of cutting off foreign aid to countries we consider to be our “allies.” Maybe it was his open stance against abortion rights for women and wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Maybe it was his desire to preserve tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while middle-class and poor Americans pay a higher tax rate than he does.  Maybe it was his bullish/war-mongering stance in foreign relation matters, but when the opportunity to defend the country presented itself, he avoided the draft while other Americans were thrown in prison for doing the same.

Maybe it was his suggestion that students should just borrow money from their parents to go to college. Maybe it was his immigration reform strategy that encouraged illegal immigrants to self-deport back to their native countries.

To throw gasoline on an already burning campaign, conservative candidates all over the country were offering their uninformed and unpopular opinions on abortion rights, recklessly throwing around allegations of socialism and class warfare, and continuing these wild conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of the President’s birth certificate and college transcripts.

Traditional America?

One of talking points in the post election coverage that keeps coming up in among the conservative talkers has something to do with Traditional America. The demographic shift taking place in America in which Caucasian men are losing control and power of the electorate is happening right in front of our eyes. This fact scares the hell out of the establishment. Take a moment and analyze whom these sentiments are coming from.  It is no surprise what kind of America they want to see.

“Take our country back” or “Traditional America,” has nothing to do with smaller government or American values. They are talking about taking us back to a traditional America when Caucasians were perceived to be superior to all other ethnicities.

The traditional America when African Americans had to sit on the back of the bus. The traditional America when African American men were hung from trees and castrated for looking at Caucasian women. The traditional America when Civil Rights activists were killed for trying to help citizens register to vote in the South.

The traditional America when people of different ethnicities were forced to drink from separate water fountains because of the color of their skin. The traditional America when students were forced to attend separate, but “equal” schools.

No thank you!

This so called traditional American may have been good for some, but the same cannot be said for all Americans. Going back to those days is not going to happen and we all need to persist that America keeps marching forward. Whether people want to deal with it or not, those events are in the fiber of American history. The dog whistle and covert terminology being recklessly thrown around by politicians and media personalities should not be overlooked.

What Free Stuff?

One of the most insulting things I have heard in the post-election coverage is the notion that people voted for President Obama because they want free stuff. Really, free stuff? Where is this free stuff and when should those of us who voted for the President expect to receive these items in the mail?

Seniors, veterans, and disabled Americans who receive benefits do not want free stuff regardless of what the talking heads in the conservative media want you to believe. Free stuff is what slave owners and their descendants received as a result of never paying a cent to the slaves who built the very foundation of this nation.

Think about it. Rich people are the beneficiaries of more free stuff than they have room to receive. They collect handouts in the form of tax loopholes and off shore money shelters that middle-class and poor people do not receive. The CEOs of large American companies choose to send jobs overseas, or lay off thousands of workers at a time in spite of making record profits over the last couple of years. These people care about making as much money as they can, while paying their employees as little as possible, period Greed is the only rational explanation for their actions.

The only free stuff people wanted from this election was the right to vote without standing in line for eight hours, or without being harassed, intimidated, and threatened by some watch group challenging the legitimacy of their vote.

Secession Insanity

The secession advocates and revolution promoters are just as disgusting as the people behind the birther movement. The country would be a better place minus the individuals who are acting like young children who throw temper tantrums when they cannot have their way.

Do not tell us in one voice that you love this country more than I do and then in the same voice say you are going to leave when your candidate loses an election. This secession insanity is not just whining; it is illogical, unpatriotic, anti-American, ahistorical, and willfully ignorant.

Originally published by Steve Maynor Jr. on November 21, 2012 via Blogger.com