I'm trying to console myself with the thought that Obama is less likely to get us into a land war than Romney would have been. And he is more likely to stick to the timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014, even if he has to lie about how his surge succeeded. (The country will obviously fall to the Taliban the minute we leave.)
I'm also mystified by the fact that Asian voters went for Obama by a margin of 75 - 25. Do they not realize how much they will be hurt by the disparate impact/redistributionist/affirmative action mentality of the Obama administration? (I hereby renounce my Japanese ancestry.)
There's been almost no talk of voting irregularities, but I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility of fraud. I did hear of one instance where a retarded 57-year-old who had never voted before was taken by the group home attendants where she lived to vote for Obama. When she told her parents about her vote, they were mystified, saying that she wouldn't even have known who the two candidates were. That was just one instance involving one vote, but it's not hard to believe that it might not have been repeated on a much larger scale. I'm not even sure that that was illegal, by the way: it's her Constitutional right to vote every bit as much as it's yours or mine.
In any case, she is a fitting metaphor for Obama's electorate.
And, I must admit, for me, for having thought that Romney would win.
And, I must admit, for me, for having thought that Romney would win.
It's hard to escape the feeling that in the long run -- and now even in the short run -- this country is doomed.
This past year, for the first time, we fell off the list of the ten most prosperous nations. And with Obama in power for four more years, we will continue to fall.
This past year, for the first time, we fell off the list of the ten most prosperous nations. And with Obama in power for four more years, we will continue to fall.
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No one has a crystal ball so there's no telling what'll happen in the next four years, what Obama will do or what Romney would have done. The Nobel Peace prize winner emphasized back in '08, for whatever reason, that Afghanistan was the important war and proceeded to intensify it by sending more troops and resources. It's really not a war, it's an occupation and they've stymied us at every turn. He and the other planners weren't so smart after all just like McNamara was a failure. It's a lost effort, all those billions of dollars spent pointlessly not to mention the needless deaths and disabilities. What a colossal fiasco. Whether Obama is less likely to get us into another major war remains to be seen. The peace prize winner appears to be the armchair general sort of person, a physical wimp enthralled with gaining power over others.
Pete --
Your description of the Afghanistan War is perfect. And I agree completely with your assessment of Obama's personality. And true, we'll never know what Romney would have done. But I'm still guessing that from the anti-Iran noises Romney was making, and from his close friendship with Netanyahu, that he would have been more inclined to do battle with Israel's enemies than Obama is.
Obama's Mideast policy seems to be for the most part to ignore it, and verbally encourage the "Arab Spring" participants. The fact that we haven't physically participated in any of these uprisings (other than Libya, from the air) means we are less likely to get into war in the short term. But while deposing corrupt leaders like Assad and Mubarak seems the right thing, they're mostly being replaced with theocracies which are even more dictatorial and repressive in their own way. And that will lead to problems in the long term, what with a renewed al Qaeda.
But even with all that, I just don't want to see another Iraq or Afghanistan, so I'm telling myself that's the silver lining in the Obama cloud.
Is there a more specific breakdown of the "Asian 75%"? It could be the Poonjabs or the Southeastern Boat Peoples who are sullying the "Asian" name, not necessarily the Japanese. Koreans probably are among the 25%, based on my vast wealth of data accumulated by knowing one Korean immigrant, and noticing several Korean churches around town.
Anonymous --
That's a good question, one I wondered about too. I haven't seen a further breakdown, but I'm guessing that southeast Asians generally voted for Obama, whereas the 25% was mostly Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese. But given the percentages, there had to be plenty of northeast Asians who voted Democratic too.
I remember what happened during the Rodney King riots in LA: after the police basically withdrew, the Korean shop owners boarded up their stores and waited for the rioters with rifles. That doesn't sound like the behavior of Obama supporters to me.
John--I don't think it's that you're not as smart as you thought, it's that you may have underestimated how naive most Americans are who voted for this guy no matter how it gets dissected. Brian
Thank you Brian. Coincidentally, at the moment I'm writing a post about exactly that -- how naive many (white) Americans are.
A couple of interesting statistics:
There was the widest gender gap in history with women favoring Obama by 12% and men favoring Romney by 8% for a 20 point gap. Viewing the election this way, women are responsible for four more years of Obama.
There were thirteen wards in Philadelphia where Obama got at least 99% of the vote. Unfortunately for Romney whites don't show such strong tribal loyalty at the polls.
- Ed
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