The Beginning of the End

Barack Obama is the President Elect. This marks a new milestone in our country's history. For the first time, a non-Caucasian has been elected as President. To paraphrase a cigarette ad from the 1960's, "We've come a long way baby"

Voter turnout was the highest it's been since 1908 at 136 million or 64% if Michael McDonald of George Mason University is correct - see the AP story.

It will be interesting to see what Obama does. Will he really increase taxes on the wealthy and will taxes for regular people be cut or stay the same? Will there be more gun control? Will he be able to get the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan quickly? Will he be able to be more fiscally responsible than the previous administration?

So, is this the end of government spending gone crazy and the beginning of more equitable America? I hope so. I hope big business will no longer be given tax cuts for outsourcing to other countries and allowed to rape the environment.

...not really related but...

I have wanted the US to do away with the Electoral College for several years now. I think it gives people in low population density areas more than 1 vote a piece (I tried verifying this but haven't found anything yet. I did find this article which describes the Electoral College pretty well though). Obama won 331 votes and McCain won 163 votes. But the popular vote was much closer - 52 to 46 percent. The Electoral College percentage was 67 to 33 percent.

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election. This is a great reason to do away with the Electoral College. Another good reason from Wikipedia:

"The electors generally cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in their respective states, but are not required by law to do so."

I guess this almost never happens but there's nothing we can do if it does.