THE AFTERMATH

In a decisive victory President Obama was re-elected as the 44^th President of the United States.  Many thought that as a result of the ongoing economic crisis, the election was there for the taking by the Republican Party and their nominee Mitt Romney. This might have been possible but for his flawed character, disingenuousness, insincerity, untrustworthiness, flip flopping and his Etch a Sketch mentality to mention some of his best points, and Mitt snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, to coin a trite phrase. Three million Republicans failed to vote for their party’s flag bearer, which says a great deal about the Mittster.

 The referendum on President Obama which he emphatically won, both in the popular as well as in the electoral vote, 332 to 206 (including Florida) was the result of his extraordinary intelligence, his decency and idealism which aided him in securing support from diverse factions of our society. He won 93% of the African American Vote; 71 of the Latino Vote; 67% of the unmarried college educated women’s vote; and 60% of the younger voters, 18 to 29; 

President Obama lost only one of the 9 battleground states, (North Carolina) that he needed to win. Polls showed that the electorate felt that he was more in touch with the people 53% to the Mittsters’ 43%.

 Almost 1 billion dollars spent by the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson($60 million) and Karl Rove($350 million) did little to influence the voting public, largely because the Mitster continually displayed his famous foot in the mouth syndrome, which was highlighted by the 47% video, where he demonstrated his disdain for 47 % of the population who he described as irresponsible individuals dependent on government programs who were incapable of caring for themselves.

  His other major Gaffe occurred during the first debate when he told the moderator, Jim Lehr that he like him and liked PBS but would eliminate their budget including Big Bird. The annual PBS budget is 450 million dollars which equals 6 hours of the defense budget; you do the math, since the Mittster is incapable of doing it.

 During the second debate he thought he caught the president misrepresenting facts about when he first declared that those responsible for the Benghazi attack were terrorist and he pounced in for the kill, only to have the moderator Candy Crawley, verify that the president did in fact call the attackers terrorist the day after the attack.

Who can forget Mitt’s disastrous European trip where he sought to spot light his foreign policy experience when he slighted his host, Great Britain by questioning  their readiness for the Olympics.

The Sunlight Foundation reviewed Karl Rove’s campaign and his super PACS, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS and found that of the $350 Million dollars spent they had a 1% success rate in unseating targeted candidates. Imagine of the $350 Million dollars collected, less than 1% went to a successful campaign in Nevada. President Obama’s re-election is a victory for the 47% and a solid defeat of the super PACS! Money and negative advertising cannot surpass boots on the ground and it was volunteer foot soldiers in Denver, Colorado like 80 year old Bertha Gallegos who spent hours on the phones extolling Latinos to get out and vote and 70 year old Antonio Esquibel, a retired college professor who personally registered 700 people who voted for the president, using the 47% comments as motivation. Colorado was a battleground state and Latino volunteers were successful in delivering this state into the democratic fold.

During the final two weekends before the election, over 200 volunteers who were a microcosm of the America. Young, old, male, female, Latino, Asian and African American manned a phone bank in Mission Viejo, California placing calls to Nevada, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania, energizing the Democratic electorate to vote. This was duplicated by 2500 other phone banks throughout the country, all volunteers who strongly supported the president’s values. Money cannot buy this dedication!

The Republican Party pundits were in denial about the results of the election and who can blame them. Fox News has repeatedly provided them with misinformation which they greedily accepted without question. Fox News denied the unemployment reports showing a drop to 7.8, saying the figures could be skewed; they denied the polls which gave the president any type of lead in the battleground states, they quickly endorsed the Gallup repeated polls that the Mittster lead by 5 points among “likely voters” which is a meaningless poll. The president was called un-American and lazy and Mitt did nothing to prevent the continuance of the negative statements, because they were readily accepted by Romney’s supporters.

There was a very noticeable difference in the makeup of both candidate's crowds with the Mittster’s crowds being very homogenized and the president’s crowds being very diverse.

 Evidently, Even the Mittster with all his gaffes, so strongly believed that he had a chance of winning that during the last week of the campaign he started wearing suits and ties, giving up the mom jeans that he wore to pretend he was a regular Joe. He told his press corps that he had only written a victory speech, an 1118 word victory speech. In the end, after a long delay he gave a five minute concession speech which was gracious and proves that the Mittster could have given an honest stright forward speech all along if he had wished to do so. At the age of 65, this is the end of the Mittsters political life. He started running for the presidency in 1994 and you would have thought that he would have perfected his act. He truly believed that he was the chosen one to lead the free world and still does not accept how out of touch he is with the common man.

 As a result of Fox News policy of denial, it was no wonder that the Republican pundits would deny the election results as they were being announced. Karl Rove was challenged on Fox about his math when he complained that Ohio was called to soon in favor of the president. The Republican electorate in general continues to be in a quandary as to the loss by the Romney/Ryan team because they never received accurate coverage by Fox News either as to the true state of today’s economy or the issue of character and dishonesty that surrounded the pair. Everyone is being blamed for the loss except the one most responsible, Willard Mitt Romney himself who ended the last few weeks of the campaign by approving an ad that falsely accused the president, Chrysler and General Motors of closing down U.S. Auto plans and outsourcing the work to China, leaving U.S. workers unemployed. This ad caused the Denver Post in an editorial to question the Mittsters’ character but this was never reported on Fox News. President Obama responded to this false negative ad by saying "You don't scare hard-working Americans just to scare up some votes." 

 Fox is now busy misrepresenting the facts about the Benghazi tragedy by saying that the U.S. and the president were aware of the attack and did nothing to prevent it. The incident was over within one hour which was not sufficient time for any type of response. It occurred on 9/11 and if Ambassador Stevens had any concerns about terrorists or his safety, he would not have gone to the consulate on that day. Security on all the embassies was reduced in May 2012 as a result of budget cuts voted on by among others, Paul D. Ryan.

The Fox News faithful however have swallowed this misrepresentation of the Benghazi tragedy to the extent that some have started calling for the president’s impeachment.

This same group of mislead individuals do not attribute the economic stagnation to President George W. Bush’s policies. They are in denial that George W took office with a balanced budget and a surplus in the treasury and left office after 8 years with two raging wars, the economy in a severe depression and a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit. They blamed the economic crisis on President Obama and do not recognize that he averted a complete collapse of the economy by the actions he was forced to take such as the stimulus bills and the bail out of the auto industry. They do not accept that the country is better off now than when the president first took office because all of this information has not been part of the Fox News format.

Donald Trump (they say that repeated use of hair dye can impair cognitive reasoning) tweeted, “this election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy”. Not content to stop before he proved himself a complete idiot, he tweeted “we can’t let this happen we should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided”. He continued to tweet “let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice. The world is laughing at us.” (at us, well maybe at him),Finally to let us know beyond a doubt that he was slightly disappointed he tweeted, “he lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country”

Bill O’Reilly complained that the white establishment is now the minority. He said that 50% of the electorate  supported President Obama because they want “stuff” He gives them ‘Stuff”   

 El Rushbo rattled on that President Obama secured the women’s vote because he pandered to them giving them what they wanted in birth control and contraceptives.

The Republican Party had an opportunity to win the women's vote on economic issues but were turned off by the Romney social issues which were emphasized by comments from Todd Akins and Richard Mourdock. 

Dick Morris who had predicted a Romney electoral landslide was at a loss to explain the results except to say that he used the 2004 turnout believing that the coalition of voters that turned out in 2008 was a onetime thing.

 So finally, victory after a hard fought battle, but there are still 87 tea party congressmen in the house who didn’t learn a thing from the election, believing that their candidate lost because he became a moderate. They still owe their allegiance to Grover Norquist and don’t seem inclined to resolve the upcoming Fiscal Cliff issue. The press is making it appear that the crisis has to be resolved between now and January 1, 2013, however even if it is not resolved by then, Congress can reach a solution during the first weeks of January making it retroactive to the end of December 2012.

The president however will need support from the electorate to make this happen. The battle has just begun!  The president said he had the pen ready to sign the bills and called for the immediate extension of the cuts for the middle class. This is not likely to happen, however because if the house submitted this bill the only remaining issue would be extending the tax cuts for the rich and it would put the Republican party in bad light to hold out for this.

FIST BUMP