Racism and the election

Here is my prediction for the November election; McCain in a landslide. The reason; pure and simple racism.

If this election breaks down like 2000 and 2004, then the margins are very tight. Democrats will vote for Obama, Republicans will vote for McCain and swing-voters will vote against Obama for one or all of three reasons. He is very liberal, he is black and he has a Muslim name. The first of those reasons is the only one that should count, but I don't believe that will be the case.

While overt racism is not rampant in this country anymore, there are certainly many people, especially older voters, who still have strong racist tendencies. And as I noted in my previous post, we are all symbolic racists unless we are black.

Whether we admit it or not, and most have no problem admitting it, the past 20+ years of Islamist terrorism have given us a distrust of Muslims. Having the name Barack Hussein Obama is certainly not a plus for a candidate at this point in U.S. history.

In the past two Presidential elections a movement of one percent in many states would have created overwhelming electoral majorities. It is my opinion, based on nothing but having lived in this country all my life, that there is much more than one percent that will vote against Senator Obama out of racist feelings.

This is my opinion, and everyone is welcome to point out how wrong I was if Obama wins in November.

Here we go again

Let's abolish the electoral college. Senator Ben Nelson of Florida makes this proposal AGAIN. You might notice that no one from Wyoming, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Montana or any other low population state ever makes this proposal. Hmmm, we wonder why that is? Maybe because they have no interest in giving up their position in electing the President in lieu of allowing the election to be decided by California, Illinois, Texas, Florida and a few other large states.

The United States is not a democracy it is a democratic republic. Politicians seem to be frequently uneducated and ignorant of the difference. If we were a democracy then majority rule would be the case, but as a democratic republic we have representatives that stand between the people and the final determination of law. This model has served us well for 200 plus years and any move to change it is short sighted.

Direct democracy does not allow for the cooling of passions. The bicameral legislature is the best example of this. The House will react to any impassioned issue with immediacy and very little thought to the long term consequences. The Senate has the duty to temper the House by looking to the longer term effects. One might argue that this is not effective, but history proves that it is a better system than allowing tempers to rule the day.

It is important to remember that this is just political grandstanding. The only way to eliminate the electoral college is through a constitutional amendment, and it is highly unlikely the Senate would ever pass such an amendment, and it is beyond credibility to imagine that the half of the states who would lose influence would ever ratify.