rejecting extremism

 Vision without action is a daydream.

Action without vision is a nightmare.

Japanese proverb

My take on yesterday's election is that Americans rejected extremism. More states okayed gay marriage. Two backed legalizing recreational use of pot but Oregon wasn't among them which is too bad as I voted for that as just commonsense. It's too bad that California is keeping the death penalty as I don't think it's proving beneficial, but there is always another time. It's an idea that's not going away.

The biggest extremists, running for leadership in Congress, were rejected which meant Mourdock, Thompson, Walsh, and Akin found their far right views weren't those of their constituents. Oh and West of Florida who says so many hateful things. He'll likely find a niche on Fox for that rhetoric now.

I don't think America rejected conservatism because despite how Fox and the righties have tried to paint it, Obama has run on what I consider to be real conservative values. The current health care bill under Obama was originally a conservative idea-- before their party ran so far right that real conservatives would not recognize it.

We went to bed happy last night. Glad Obama won a real victory of Electoral College and popular vote. We had donated to campaigns outside of our state for the first time and in each case, that candidate won. Big money was always against them, but the values of the voters counted more than those dollars-- even ours. In the end, it's still one man one vote.

Some say this is the end of white male controlled government in the United States. I disagree. I know a lot of white males who voted for Obama and Democratic values. They voted on the issues and I hope that's what is at an end-- voting on color or religion. Vote on issues. Vote on character. Color of skin is irrelevant and a lot of us see that. Hopefully more will.

So now comes the work because a budget crisis looms; and even though the Senate is a bit more Democratic in 2013, the House is still controlled by Republicans. Will they be more willing to look at issues like taxes to get the budget more realistic? The Republican mantra has been they must protect the wealthiest from any tax increases. Americans don't agree.

We'll see if anything can be done with the filibuster still in place or must it be turned  into a demand-- you want to filibuster, get out there and do it. It's been a lazy man's tool recently, but they can go back to real filibusters and they better. Right now a majority in the Senate buys you nothing but blockades where one Senator can stop anything. That is not the majority rules, and it's been used to block appointments that should have been decided by vote-- not blackmail. Real filibusters, filmed filibusters, would let Americans see what these people believe and why they support what they do. They say they can't do that as it stops progress on anything. Like this kind of filibuster doesn't???

I'd like to think that what I see about extremism losing would be the take of Republicans, but I doubt it for now. They will think Paul Ryan is their solution and he is a religious extremist who although he won reelection to his district, does not hold the values of the majority of Americans with his desire to force his religion onto others, with his lack of compassion for genuinely helping the poor or healing the sick which tells me he's not a Christian but a christianist.

One last thing-- I don't think that the hurricane cost Romney the presidency. I think seeing Christie and Obama working together, cooperating for the good of the people might've played a role. It's what the country has believed we do but hasn't seen recently. It reminded voters how it could be when leaders put the people ahead of the party. Obama was heading toward winning anyway though based on polling-- which turned out to be pretty darned accurate.

Electing Romney would not have not allowed working across the aisles despite his call for how he'd do that. He didn't in Massachusetts and he would have owed too much to the far right to do it as President. It was his way or the highway. Who he really was, we may never know.

Romney did give a very gracious concession speech. Losing hurts and he did it with grace. If he'd shown more of that during the campaign, less lies, less unwillingness to ever confront the extremists, this might've ended differently. For our country, I'm glad it didn't. I wanted those four more years and hope that a lot of positive things can happen during them.