Thank God That's Over.

[attackfish]

Or, the only thing that could make me want to go through an election night is nine months of presidential campaigning.

Don't get me wrong, I love politics, the political process, voting, our democracy, yeah.  But my nails are chewed down to nubs.  Four years ago, I was trying to cheer for Obama and my country while crying for my childhood home, California at the same time.  This morning, I am all smiles as the hateful misogynistic Republican senators and house members went down, three states voted to legalize same-sex marriage, a fourth voted not to make it illegal, we elected our first openly gay Senator (and she's a woman, too!), first Asian-American woman Senator, and our first disabled woman legislator, and we reelected Barrack Obama!

I can relax now.

Comments

[attackfish]

I know! Sometimes stateside, I forget how scary he is, having sat through the Republican nomination process with him being the not-as-horrible one. Let's all take a moment to imagine President Sanatorium.

Four years ago, it seemed to take longer, but that might have been because I was actually working on the Obama campaign...

[unjapanologist]

Romney was legitimately, terrifyingly extremist from a Belgium POV. Obama is already really right wing. Romney is the kind of right winger that other politicians wouldn't be caught dead in a photo with.

Santorum... Whooo. I don't think we have an equivalent of that :D

[attackfish]

Oh America...

[unjapanologist]

Well, it's not like any country's flavor of right or left is The Standard that the other countries' politicians can be weighed against. Our socialists and communists are probably very moderate compared to some other countries I can think of. But I wish there was more awareness everywhere of how similar labels can mean very different things. (I think Belgian socialists all have little heart attacks whenever somebody calls Obama socialist. That is very confusing :P)

[attackfish]

I hope you can tell at least someof the socialists you know to calm down. I've heard Republicans complain about "Obama's brand of Socialistic Fascism." It's as bad as the people calling him an Atheist Muslim. Hereabouts, Fascist means "anybody" I don't like, and Socialist means "Democrat I don't like." Obama's very moderate by US standards, but the Right (many of whom actually approach fascism, only with less ideological consistency) are shouting that he's some kind of radical leftist in the hopes we'll believe it.