Well I hope you all went out and voted for whatever lesser of two evils you decided on. I’m so glad it’s over because I’ve really had enough of the negative add campaigns. Both DeVos and Granholm in Michigan have been pretty ridiculous. I think the one that pissed me off the most was the DeVos one with his daughter who narrated the whole commercial saying “Please vote for my dad.” Not only was it manipulative, but it also had an air of “I have a hot daughter, so you should vote for me.”

I also have to admit I found myself giving updates throughout the night like “Alright, we only need 3 more seats and we’ve got the house” as if the Democrats were my “team” that I’m rooting for this year.

Here’s another thought that I had on voting day. When George W Bush won in 2004, I remember standing in Best Buy (“working”) watching it on one of the display televisions with my arms crossed and shaking my head. I was disappointed. Not that I was a huge fan of Kerry, but I had had enough of Bush. I watched Kerry’s concession speech on one of the display refridgerators we had that had a 13 inch LCD screen in it.

I then watched the Bush victory speech. He started off by saying “This is a decisive victory for America,” and went on his ra ra speech from there. Now he won 51% to 49%. I wouldn’t call that a huge victory. That’s a buzzer beater. The thing I listened for in his victory speech is how he addressed me, one of the people that did not vote for him, but would now be stuck with him for 4 years. And what did he do to address my thoughts or my feelings? Nothing. I was just flaberghasted that he would say nothing to address the 49% of the country that did not vote for him. That’s a good chunk of the country, and would it have killed him to say something like “For those of you who did not vote for me, I want to win over your trust, and I assure you that I will be listening to you and protecting you…” Just something along those lines to assure me that he even gave a rat’s ass about me. And he did nothing but polarize the country a shade more in that brief moment. What a missed opportunity.

However, in watching the Granholm (woo-hoo!) victory speech, I realized that she didn’t really do anything like that either. Now granted she won by a much larger margin, but still, why don’t politicians ever acknowledge the people that did not vote for them? They acknowledge the other people running usually, and this can be done quite gracefully from what I’ve seen, but how can they just disregard all the voters that didn’t want them? Seems like such an easy, reasonable thing to do, but I guess I’m no politician.

As John Stewart says, 90% of this country are reasonable people who don’t give a shit about political parties and could honestly make it work. The other 10% run the country.