A few words on the Obama election...

Last Tuesday was a great day for all Americans. I personally have never been so proud to be an American for so many reasons. After years of holding my nose while voting or writing in a candidate (I rather snottily voted for Dr. Benjamin Spock in the 1972 Nixon/McGovern campaign, emphatically for Carter in 1976 and less so in 1980, very reluctantly for Mondale in 1984, even more reluctantly for Dukakis in 1988 and both Clinton campaigns--he is a DLC member after all--as well as Gore and Kerry) I actually had a candidate in whom I held a great deal of admiration.

So it was indeed a special night for Obama supporters and others who have been stunned by the arrogance, incompetence and ignorance of the Bush years.

We as a nation needed to make a transformational change--a guy who understands technology (e.g. the internet) as opposed to a guy who can't use a computer. For me this was more important than the race thing, though I will be the first to admit that I never expected to see a black man win the Presidency in my lifetime. I'm so happy to be so wrong.

This election reminds me how wonderful this country can be, when we challenge ourselves and follow the right path, Americans can and will do the right thing. Often many will resist but change for the good can happen. And it did last week.

I know President-elect Obama would never have happened if President-inept Bush didn't happen. Two steps backward, three steps forward (or sadly sometimes the opposite). Obama represents the courage to move forward which is a rare commodity but a vital quality for those who seek to transform a world that yields most painfully and most reluctantly to change.

I wish my father and mother could be here to witness this election. They were very much a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s (my dad went to all major peace and civil rights demonstrations in Washington DC including MLK's "I have a dream" speech) and they would be overjoyed.

And the post mortem? Would I like to see some response to eight years of neo con stupidity? Yes but we don;t have time for this. I don't think there should be or will be much post election gloating. Our problems are far too massive to play the partisan schtick and expect stuff to get done.

Still the pendulum has shifted so far to the right that we progressives need to act. If we stay where we are as a baseline, the conservatives have won by effectively shifting the playing field. So personally I would like to see some "undoing" of the neo conservative agenda, regarding both foreign and economic policies (like getting rid of tax cuts for the wealthy or what I call welfare for the well healed). I do believe if there is any such thing as a silver lining to this economic meltdown it is simply this: the politics of deregulation and trickle down have been exposed for their sheer failure. So when Reagan famously said "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem", he could not have been more wrong. Hopefully more people will figure that out and the naive notion that Reagan was a good president will come to an end.

Another factor is that the President-inept (I give Bush no slack whatsoever) is leaving all sorts of land mines for Obama's people to find. Here's how the NYT described it in an editorial the Sunday before the election: "President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage..."

Finally there has to be some reckoning for the complete politicalization of the justice department (these investigations into Gonzales should continue). And those responsible for committing torture in Guatanamo or Abu Graib need to be held accountable.

And on a deeply personal level I hope Joe Lieberman is ostracized for being the disgusting human being he has revealed himself to be. I've blogged about him as part of my "Axis of Assholes" and it was simply too much fodder--I had to divide it into two posts.

I think of him as a collaborator and from where he stands, that is not a very good thing.

I hope he is sufficiently punished without being tossed out of the Democratic caucus. Perhaps the Democrats should demote him to a lesser committee and then send him to Atlanta to campaign for Jim Martin against the utterly despicable Saxby Chambliss.