Post election – Week 2

No surprises as we enter the second week following Obama’s election, though the concerns keep mounting. Obama believes he has a mandate because he won more than 50% of the vote. According to American University political scientist Curtis Gans, an authority on voter turnout, 2008 Voter turnout is estimated at 60.7% – 61.7% of eligible voters vs. 60.6% in 2004. The percentages remain substantially the same even though 4 million more people are estimated to have cast a ballot this year as there are 6.5 million more voters registered than were in 2004. The figures also show that Republican turnout DECLINED 1.3% and Democratic turnout increased by 2.6%. African American voter turnout increased by 2% to 13% of the electorate.

What does this all mean?

• More Republicans stayed home, unhappy with John McCain and were willing to let people “get what they ask for”. More would have stayed home but for Sarah Palin.
• More Democrats turned out. Due in large part to the vote getting effort of Obama’s supporters, ACORN being none the least.
• More African Americans voted – No Comment.
• A quote by a *Democratic strategist who did not want to be named as criticizing Obama’s campaign. – “It sort of calls into question some of the vaunted ground game discussion, the whole turnout machine,..” “The GOTV effort was redoubled in 2008 compared to 2004, but it did not seem to make that big of a difference.”
• Obama garnered approximately 65.97 million votes and McCain 57.77 million, lets see, of all the eligible voters in the United States 33% supported Obama 27.7% supported McCain and 39.3% didn’t vote!

To sum it up, If there was a mandate it was that most people didn’t care who won and neither candidate has taken the pulse of the Nation! However Obama believes he has a “real mandate for change” and is planning to use “EXECUTIVE ORDERS” to “ACT QUICKLY” to undo the previous administration’s policies, without waiting for congressional action. According to John Podesta, Obama’s transition chief, a good bet is that Obama will ban offshore drilling, among other priorities! As Obama has already predicted our energy bills “WILL SKYROCKET”, just when home heating and transportation costs have reached an acceptable level, an insane attempt to force feed us an energy policy that is technologically impossible appears to be his priority. Obama is in effect promising us $5 a gallon gasoline and home heating oil again!