Democrats win – and win big

Barack Obama did it.  He pulled off an impressive victory over John McCain to be elected as this country’s 44th President.  Congratulations to him and his supporters.

I’m surprisingly not upset, probably because I wasn’t too excited about the prospects of a McCain presidency or him being the standard bearer of the GOP.  I also don’t think Obama will be as bad as most conservatives do.  The biggest problem is that he will be the beneficiary of a natural economic upswing and people may equate his economic policies with success.

Let me say one more thing about Obama’s win.  I do not want to see or hear conservatives whining like childish liberals did after Gore and Kerry lost.  Don’t enjoy the loss, but don’t let it consume you.  Lear from it – what can be done better, what are Obama’s legitimate weaknesses, etc.  I don’t want to hear anyone say Obama stole this election.  Not a word of it.  If ACORN manufactured one million votes and Black Panthers scared away one million McCain supporters Obama would have still won.  Deal with it.

Democrats dominated locally.  Parker Griffith inexplicably won the election to represent Alabama’s 5th district in Washington.  I just can’t imagine people connecting the arrow beside his name given what he has done and his utter lack of integrity and honesty.  At least it is only a two year term.  The Republicans better start looking high and low for a better candidate to run against him in 2010 before he becomes ensconced in office.  Wayne Parker is a fantastic individual, a truly decent man.  But that isn’t a qualification for Congress and Parker just isn’t a great politician.

After a quick look at the numbers the big surprise for me is how many people voted for McCain and then turned around and voted for Griffith.  Here in Madison County McCain won 57% of the vote and Obama won 42%.  In the AL-05 race Wayne Parker only won 49% of the votes – 8% less than McCain.  So it wasn’t an onslaught of straight ticket Dem votes that beat Parker.

In Madison County one would be tempted to call it a Democrat victory, an artifact of Obama’s long coat tails.  I’m not so sure.  It seems more like people voted for every incumbent.  Every contested incumbent Democrat won by a margin of about 60% to 40%.  There was only one contested incumbent Republican, Judge Dick Richardson, and he won as well, although his margin was a slimmer 55% to 45%.

This was the first time that the Madison County Republican Party ran a full slate of candidates.  They picked a hell of a bad year to start that habit!  I privately figured that winning one race would constitute a victory.  In the end the candidate who did the best was probably the least qualified, but they all lost big.  Hopefully they learn from the experience and don’t let the challenging circumstances of this race dampen their future attempts.

In other races…

Bobby Bright narrowly defeated Jay Love by 1,766 votes.  I’m actually not surprised by this one.  Bright was a great candidate and Love’s bitter primary battle turned off a lot of voters.  Mike Rogers kept his seat as expected, but the margin of victory (53% – 47%) over a guy who was a nobody a few months ago really demonstrates the tarnish on the Republican brand right now.

It looks like Twinkle Cavanaugh is going to lose her bid for president of the PSC to Lucy Baxley, although the race has not been called yet.  Twinkle = under performer.  Alabama Republicans need to quit voting for her in primaries regardless of (or becaue of?) her allegiance to the party.  The Supreme Court race also is too close to call, but Greg Shaw has a 14,000 vote lead over Paseur with 99% reporting.  If Shaw can hold on it would be one of few bright spots for the GOP.

Silver linings…

The Alabama GOP better be happy our legislative and gubernatorial races are in 2010, not 2008.

McCain isn’t the face of the Republican Party going forward.  Now the party can redefine its identity.  My personal hopes?  Slant more towards the libertarian philosophy.  Support actual limited government and be willing to stake principled, although possibly unpopular, positions.  Ron Paul was the only Republican candidate to actually energize people in the way Obama did for the Democrats.  Sure, some of his positions were too “out there,” but he was on to something.  Take the good, leave the bad.  Oh, and learn to use the internet to raise money.  Barack and his fellow Dems just took you to the mat on that one.