The Final Push

It's Election Day, time for the final push, and the time to see our democracy in action.
It's exciting. I love watching the results, much as others might watch a horse race or a sporting event, but beyond the mere sport of it, the very Americanism of it all, lies the stakes—Iraq, our foreign policy, our security, and our very rights as Americans—the stakes simply couldn't be greater.

The usual negative nonsense has appeared on television, just like clockwork. The movie-style announcer voices, the grainy black & white, mugshot-like photos, and the awful smears. We've struck a new low this year, on both sides. Some of the worse spots I've seen, no great surprise, slammed the Democrats. In Tennessee, Corker ran an ad (quickly yanked but endlessly replayed for free over the next several news cycles) that suggested that Corker’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Harold Ford, who is Black, chases after White women—a blatant play on the last lingering racism in the area (although most Tennessee folk quickly rejected the ad, bless their hearts). Another choice ad attacked a Democratic House candidate in New York for calling sex lines with taxpayers’ money (in fact, an aide misdialed an office number by using the wrong area code and hung up immediately, costing the tax payers a whopping $1.25 for the error). And so on.

Now it’s down to the wire. I’ve already voted and served my civic duty, and I can only sit back and wait for the exit polls to come in. Control of Congress hangs in the balance, and by this time tomorrow I’ll know the story … the suspense of it all!
Will the country get a new direction? Or worse gridlock in Congress?
Will we get some real oversight and direction in Iraq? Or yet more of the same profiteering and ignorance in the face of reality? (Sorry, my biases are showing.)
Only time will tell.

God Bless America!