There, I exercised my democratic duty, and it’s probably no mystery who I voted for President if you’ve followed my blog at all.  Here are some of my thoughts from this whole election season:

– If Obama wins this, he has not only defeated the Republican election machine, but the Clintons as well.  That is nothing short of amazing.  Now I know he’s had his moments of negativity and attacks on McCain, but for the most part, his campaign has had a lot of integrity.  He has more times then not talked about what he would do or defended himself from the attacks by McCain.  No one can run a campaign with 100% integrity, as they are still politicians, but the fact that the public just hasn’t bought all the “he’s a terrorist,” “he’s a muslim,” “he’s an elitist,” “he’s a socialist!” and all the other shit that the republican machine has thrown at him is I think a wonderful statement about America.

Historically candidates have called each other far worse things than Obama and McCain have called each other, but it’s the blatant lying and manipulation of the American people that I get tired of.  Maybe the nation has gotten tired of it.  That would be the biggest victory of all, I feel.  The death of fear based politics would be wonderful.

– I’ve said this before in so many words, but I’m not a straight ticket democrat, and I hate when people get affiliated with a political party as if it’s their race.  What I believe is that no one party can run this country very well on its own.  It would be nice if we had more than two, but our heads would just explode apparently, so two is what we’ll have to deal with.  That said, we need our government to be level headed and have voices from all sides of an argument.  Bush in the last 8 years has done everything he can to get only “his guys” in there, and Clinton did a decent job of cronie-ism before that as well.  I do not see that changing with McCain, but I do see it changing with Obama.  And I feel that whether or not you agree with his politics, he’s the candidate that has the best chance to unite the parties.  That’s what I’m looking for in a president right now.

– I’m going to head downtown to Grant Park tonight for Obama’s (hopefully) victory speech, and though it’s going to be crazy, I feel like it’s an incredible opportunity that I could be present for the acceptance speech of the first black president of the US.  I want to be able to tell people years from now I was there.

It was almost exactly 40 years ago that my dad was in Grant Park at the DNC, where mounting tension over the Vietnam war and racial issues culminated in riots and mass chaos.  For my safety and for the betterment of this country, I hope this one is different.  Though the irony of Obama winning, and people lighting cars on fire like when the Pistons with the championship is hilarious in a sad-nofaithinhumanity type way.

– Last night when leaving the Blackhawks game, me and another guy who went to the game (let’s call him Charlie) were talking about the Obama rally tonight (to which Charlie has tickets).  A guy spoke out rather aggresively from behind us saying “It’s not a matter of IF he loses, it’s WHEN he loses.”  We joked with him a little bit saying “I guess you’re not much of a supporter then?”  He responded “Do I look like a supporter?”  It was then that I noticed he was a giant redneck man.  I responded “sure, why wouldn’t you look like a supporter?”  He then said “what do I look like?” in an effort to display his redneck machismo (I’m 98% sure he was hoping to incite a fight of some sort).  We considered respoinding “McCain’s advisors?” but considering his girth, we decided to go with the fact that he had a Wrigley Field shirt on and say “a fan of Wrigley field?”  I settled him down more by saying “well there’s something we have in common” and he said “yeah alright,” and walked away down his road paved in hate.

So a few reactions to that:

1)  What a shame that just because he was a giant white ass hole, he felt like that meant he needed to vote republican.  Don’t box yourself in, man, there’s plenty of giant white ass holes that are democrat too.

2)  Bumping into those guys made me feel like the ignorant republican masses are far more terrifying then ignorant democratic one.  I would be much more terrified wearing an Obama shirt at a McCain rally than wearing a McCain shirt at an Obama rally.   This is solely speculation, and it is coming straight out of my ass, but it seems like ignorant democrats have the instinct of making fun of someone, where as ignorant republicans have the instinct of beating the shit out of someone.

Regardless of whether you agree with me or not on any of this, I do hope you go out and you vote, and that your knowledgable about why you’re voting the way you are.  If it really does come down to one issue for you, at least be aware of that.  If one issue is that important to you, that’s fine and I can understand why you vote one way or the other.  But please don’t vote some way simply because your parents always have.

And if you disagree with me, we can still be friends!  That’s the beauty of real life is that manipulative politics don’t have to divide us normal people.  We don’t HAVE to hate each other or pick sides because we disagree in real life.  Isn’t that great?

So vote, disagree, and be friends!  That is my message to you all.