Feelin' All Right

OK, I went zero for 3 on my political predictions. I think I'll refrain from that in the future. I'm not very good at prognosticating, I think I do better at seeing what has happened. Which brings me to this writing.

It dawned on me today what it was that I had witnessed in the elections just ended. But I believe that what it really came down to was that voting for Obama was the feel-good vote of the season. By that, I mean that the act of voting itself, made many people feel really good about themselves. The reasons for feeling good were many and varied. There were the true believers of liberalism, of course. But there are just too many stories out there about certain demographic groups level of support to think that they were all in agreement about motives. For instance, while both black and gay voters went overwhelmingly for Obama, it seems that the huge black turnout, in California, also helped push the gay marriage ban over the top, much to the consternation of gays, their presumed ally. My guess is that when they cast their Obama votes, each group left the polls feeling pretty good about what they had just done, but for different reasons. There also was a 1968 feeling coming from the young people. Among students, I think one would have to have been a brave, true believer to have shown support for McCain to their peers. There was a sense that Iraq was their Viet Nam and they were going to make the revolution succeed, this time. Hispanics backed Obama 2 to 1, although McCain had been been on their side during the immigration bill debates.

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes. And I'm certainly not going to say what liberals did in 2000 and 2004 (That the American people are basically stupid), but I refuse to believe that this was about liberal policy. A very embarrassing audio tape was circulated around the Internet a few weeks before the election. Some smart ass radio DJs sent a guy in to Harlem where he interviewed random people about why they were voting for Obama. To be honest, it was a set-up on several levels, but I still think it was telling. They'd ask the person to choose between several choices of policy positions that they felt mattered most as the reason they were voting for Obama. But the choices were all McCain's positions. So they'd ask something like, "Which do think is more important, Obama's desire to stay the course in Iraq or his pledge to appoint pro-life judges?" Often, the answer was "both," or they'd make comments like "I think it's more important that he stay the course in Iraq."

I just don't think they were all on the same page, which will make for an interesting clash of expectations down the road.