Some Thoughts On The Election

I spent about 5 hours last night watching the election coverage on CBS, mostly because I was interested in who our next president is going to be but also because I think Katie Couric is TOTALLY do-able even though she’s like 55 years old.

Yeah, I said it. Don’t lie, you want to do her too. It might take a few cocktails, but you know you’d do it. Ladies, I’m talking to you too.

Anyway, I have to preface everything I am about to say with this: I did not vote yesterday. I am registered in Flagstaff but live in Mesa right now and I don’t have the money to drive all the way up there to place a vote I didn’t want to make anyway. There was only one thing on the ballot that I cared enough about to vote (I was hoping to see Proposition 102 get shot down, which called for marriage to be defined as between “One Man and One Woman” by the law—unfortunately it didn’t get shot down, so now only straight people are going to be allowed to fuck up the sanctity of marriage).

Even if I had been in Flagstaff, I’m not sure I would have voted for president anyway. The guy I really wanted never made it out of the primaries, and because I am a registered Republican and the guy I wanted was a Democrat, I couldn’t have helped him out of the primaries anyway.

I don’t really like the way the voting system is set up anyway, but I won’t get into that very much, because I have some other things I would like to talk about regarding the new president of the United States and what I saw on the coverage last night.

The first thing that I noticed, and probably the most telling about the difference between the parties and what they stand for, is the choice of venue chosen for the election parties of each party. The Democrats were stationed in a park in Chicago (Grant Park), which was the site of the famed Democratic national convention in 1968. The Republicans, on the other hand, were stationed at The Biltmore in downtown Phoenix.

For those who don’t know Phoenix, The Arizona Biltmore is a hotel in central Phoenix and it is pretty much the symbol for old money in the Valley. Right now their specials for room rates start at $259 per night for the worst room in the place, to give you some kind of idea of the type of hotel we’re looking at. And as an FYI, the Barry Goldwater suite, where the McCain’s were staying, STARTS at $1,000 per night in the off season, and while I’m sure they got it comped to them, I think that speaks volumes.

So, what I noticed about the election parties was that the Republicans held their party in a very elite, inaccessible place known for it’s “old money” smell while the Democrats held their party in a free park in Chicago. This may not seem like much of an issue to some people, but to me it speaks VOLUMES about what the Republican party has grown to stand for since I registered as one in the 1990’s.

Another thing I noticed was the lack of class many of the Republican backers showed during McCain’s speech when he conceded victory to Obama. At the mention of Obama’s name, a spattering of “boos” erupted from his supporters on more than one occasion. While I thought McCain did a good job of putting an end to that, the fact that he even had to just made his supporters look that much worse in my eyes. There were probably 2-3000 people around when he made that speech, and I would guess at least 100-200 of them booed Obama’s name. I do have to give McCain credit, though, because his speech was classy and I have no doubts he will continue to serve his country to the best of his abilities.

Conversely, at Obama’s victory speech (and I’ve got to interject what a cool dude this guy is, he seems like the kind of guy who could get you to buy into an abstinence program from him while he was in the other room humping your sister) when McCain’s name was mentioned, there were actually cheers from the audience. There were probably 70,000 people there and I heard no “boos” at the mention of McCain’s name. Not to say there weren’t any, but if they did boo, they were not close enough to be heard.

I don’t want this to come across as Republican-bashing, because I’m sure if things would have turned out the other way there would have been some boos from the crowd in Chicago, or possibly even a riot, but those were all low- to middle-class people there (except for Oprah, who not only could have bought a new house for everyone there if she wanted to, but she actually had little flecks of gold in her tears if you look closely at the video. Kind of like Goldschlager, only not as fun to drink before singing karaoke) so that type of thing might be expected. I don’t expect that type of behavior from people who are “in the money” so to speak.

The bottom line is that something big happened last night, whether you like it or not. I got the same kind of feeling I got when the twin towers came down in New York—not necessarily as bad of a feeling, just the feeling that the world was about to change. Only time will tell if that’s good or bad for us as a country. 9/11 seemed like it was good for us in the short run, spiking our patriotism to heights I’d never seen it, but not even 6 months later all of the American flags that people had gone out to buy for their car windows were littering the freeways across Arizona.

Hopefully this doesn’t turn out the same way. Hopefully we can be the great country we are supposed to be.

B!