TEARS KEEP FLOWING

It is now 34 hours since Obama was declared the President-Elect. Tears started flowing at that point even though I knew he had won a couple of hours before it was made official by all of the media. It took the images of the Grant Park crowd and the tears flowing down Jesse Jackson’s cheeks to get me going. I thought I wouldn’t cry today but I bought a New York Times and read an article about the Obamas moving into the White House on the first page. That got me going. Then I turned to the op-ed page and read moving articles. It is just so wonderful. The whole planet is celebrating. This is what democracy looks like!

We Americans sooner or later get it right. We are creating a more perfect union. We may backslide from time to time. But the best angels of our nature sooner or later prevail. I believe in democracy and the USA has been the world’s most important democracy for a long, long time now.

Now for a little election analysis. Did you notice that New England no longer has a Republican member of bthe House of Representatives? New York only has 3 out of 29. The Republican party is nearly extinct in most of the Northeast. In the 11 states of the Northeast, there are 19 Democratic Senators and 3 Republican Senators. The 3 Republicans are the most Liberal of all Republicans. I don’t want my analysis to be too sectional but you have to notice this. There are less people in the Northeast than in the South but the Northeast is now far more Democratic and Liberal than the South is Republican and Conservative. I saw this clearly after the 2006 congressional election.

Now we can see that presidential politics has changed too. The Democrats no longer need to run a Southerner to win the White House! The Midwest and Coastal West are now increasingly Democratic and Liberal. Obama won the Northeast, the Midwest and the Coastal West by a landslide. McCain won the South, the Plains and the Mountain states by a substantial margin but not nearly as big as Bush won those sections in the previous 2 elections. Most of the nation has moved away from the Republicans and from Conservatives. The exception is the traditional Bible Belt region including West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida.

What I am saying is this: There is a new political landscape in the USA! There has been a profound political realignment. The Republicans have used the race card to win elections since the early 1960s. It is fitting and just that Obama, an African American, has now prevailed and has ended this strategy hopefully forever. It is a new day in America.