Here we are at the end of the campaign trail of the 2008 election, or as it is known in the Washington area, the kickoff for 2012. We all know where the candidates stand on the issues, heck, Al Gore emailed my work address this morning to tell me about how important elections are, which is probably caused by global warming. In just over 24 hours, it will all finally be over. No more calls, no more people knocking on your door, no more activists pathetically trying to get you to listen to them as you walk by listening to your iPod.
This is the end of the good times.
In my opinion, this election could not have come at a worse time. We as a nation were finally united and then this thing comes along and splits us all up again. For the past two or three years, we have reached across our own aisles to work together toward a common goal: hating George W. Bush. It took the hard work of a bumbling administration, war, natural disaster, the English language and the hard work of people like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, but we got there.
Black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, middle class, liberal, conservative, moderate, we all came together and agreed that our president was doing a really bad job at running the country. Some were there in 2000, some took six or seven years to arrive at that conclusion. Even Fox News jumped the Bush ship last year.
But now here we are again, divided as ever. The Republicans are looking for a three-peat, while the Democrats are hoping their rookie has the stuff to take them all the way. And of course, the race symbolically ends tonight, on the pantheon of modern American politics, Monday Night Football. There, the widely respected political journalist Chris Berman (who I think has won a Pulitzer or two) will have one of the last interviews with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Expect the hard-hitting, well researched questions frequently found in Bermanian journalism.
What I’m really not looking forward to is hearing from the side that loses. First off, there will be tons of lawsuits filed in districts on behalf of both campaigns. Then a few months the new president takes office, we’re going to start seeing the dissension peculate into American culture once again. Responding to this, of course, will be the backlash from the supporters of the new administration. We’ll again start to see rambling rants of the trolls on YouTube, or angry status messages on Facebook. We are going to start seeing the preachiness come back to the pundits and the blow hards, because they’ve taken a backseat to the blow hards running for office for too long.
At times like this, I would like to say it’s good to be an independent.