End Of The Trail

Post-Election musings from a worthless moderate.

I knew it was over when the AP called Florida for Barack Obama. CBS News closed the deal moments later when they put California, Oregon and Washington in the blue zone. At 9pm, Mountain Standard Time, I watched the wires and networks make the announcement that began a new chapter in U.S. history and the history of the world.

We'll all remember where we were when we found out Barack Obama became the nation's first African-American President. I was at my desk at KOLD News 13, nervously preparing election coverage. The result didn't surprise me at all. I could see it coming for days, for weeks. Maybe the exit polls would be wrong, as they were with John Kerry in 2004, but I doubted it. Obama just had too much going his way and Sen. John McCain couldn't stop it.

Truth be told, this is no landslide -- Obama is besting McCain in the popular vote by only five percentage points as I write this. But Obama's team knew where they could win and campaigned like crazy in those places. They used the same master strategy that worked in the primaries, gaming the winner-take-all system of the electoral college and squeezing out votes anywhere they could.

The unresolved question is did Obama win, or did McCain lose? I think it's the latter. McCain made several big mistakes:

* Wasting time. He pounded Obama's association with miscreants like Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright instead of promoting his economic plan. If McCain had spent more time on Obama's wealth-redistribution remarks, he may have siphoned off a few more votes.

* Sarah Palin. Go ahead, start hating on me now. I'll wait. Gov. Palin may have energized Republicans from the get-go, but she dug her own hole when Katie Couric grilled her, revealing she just didn't have enough standard equipment. Factor in Tina Fey's Saturday Night Live caricature and the product is a lot of people who found disturbing truths in TV parody. Shoulda picked Mitt Romney.

* Maverick? Ha! It's hard for people to believe you're a political rabblerouser when the opposition drags out soundbites showing you voted with the president 90% of the time. Having oodles of lobbyists or former lobbyists on your staff doesn't help.

* Simply being a Republican. Let's face it: the GOP brand is in the trash can right now. The true maverick move would have been to run as an independent, thus freeing him to pick Joe Lieberman as a running mate... if he could stomach the astronomical political consequences. McCain would've split the GOP worse than Ross Perot in 1992 and guaranteed a Democratic victory months in advance. The senator would have also had to build his own financing system, something not out of reach, but John McCain, you're no Ron Paul.

I have a number of conservative friends who are disappointed with the results. I have a number of liberal friends who are loving every minute. And here I am, caught in the moderate middle. I'm not angry. I'm not exuberant. If I have any feeling, it's this curious anticipation -- like some kid who wants to know what's boxed up in the basement. News junkies are like that. It doesn't mean I love my country any less.

Please don't tell me this country is going to Hades because "some people" picked Barack Obama. And don't tell me either that he's the Second Coming. Don't tell me the media had it in for McCain or didn't do its job vetting Obama. I've already heard it all. Sen. McCain handled the outcome with grace in his concession speech, and I pray all of us will too.