The Bushlin Wall Has Fallen, The Obama Era Dawns and Political Pundits Still Don’t Get It

First off, I’m happy that Obama followed my lead and is choosing to get a puppy to open this new chapter of history.  The picture above is my puppy who’s still too young to come home, but I’ll have him well before inauguration day.

Most of the world appears to be ecstatic and elated that America somehow found a man to elect who is the polar opposite of George W. Bush in every imaginable and important way possible.  Then there are political pundits that seem as clueless as ever.

I must disclose that I rarely watch television news which makes cable “newscasters” seem a bit cartoonish when I do watch them.  (Don’t watch the news for a month and come back to it and you’ll see what I mean.)  The fact that most of the content these “news” channels provide is opinion rather fact shows the dilemma of creating 24 hour infotainment to win ratings wars with ever-declining viewership.  Therefore I have a little compassion for them, but only a little.

After Obama’s speech as our new President-elect I surfed through the cable news channels to see what the political “experts” (who are usually over 80% inaccurate in their predictions if you follow them) had to say.

What was interesting is that they were focused on statistics of how white men, Latinos, black women, white women, and other factions voted that they missed the whole point.  Everyone I know who felt that electricity when it was announced that Obama won felt they were having a JFK moment.  This kind of electricity hasn’t surged around in America or around the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Finally we may have a President more interested in equality and rebuilding America than one focused on serving corporate and monied interests.

No, he’s not a messiah, but he does seem to be intelligent, thoughtful, heartful and effective in getting Americans to get involved in creating positive change.  After seeing millions of people donate time, money or both to the campaign it seems like we could be revisiting our historic roots of banding together to clean up after our current natural disasters.  Most of the people who worked on campaigns this season had never done so before and some were over 60 years old.

While pundits over analyze strategy, race and other factors, the electorate that voted for Obama did so for other reasons.  Obama supporters  feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves – righting the wrongs, misdeeds and missteps our nation has embarked upon with imperialistic policies.

Older generations see electing a black man to be president as an historic occasion while younger generations who never saw blatant racism and grew up on hip hop music see this as a “duh” moment.  The most qualified person was elected and skin color is irrelevant in what he can achieve.  Both generations are right while the pundits are still busy ignoring the obvious fact that Obama won because he connected with voters like no other candidate in recent history.

No one knows exactly why anything happens.  We make up reasons in hindsight that fit our particular views and tell ourselves that our interpretation is a fact.  This is just how the human brain works.  So for once, lets not waste time looking to “experts” to see how it happened or listen to them about their inaccurate predictions of what will happen.  (Remember how the election was destined to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guilliani?  …How did that work out and why are the same pundits still employed?)  No one will ever be in the same circumstances to create the same experiences that we went through the last two years.  So lets just enjoy the moment and prepare to start a ride on a much different train than any we’ve been on this century.