It’s over!
on November 11th, 2012 at 8:00 am
Election day has passed and we won’t have to sit through any more of those “Don’t vote for that rascal!” ads for at least a few weeks.
Thank Goodness!
Unfortunately, now I have to listen to (actually, I don’t HAVE to) all the Republicans who are making excuses for why they lost the presidential race as well as those who are crying about the results, warning us that the next four years will be the death of the United States as we know it.
Anybody with Twitter who follows Donald Trump got to see him threaten to hold his breath and turn blue if the results were not reversed.
Okay, maybe not. But he did throw a little tantrum that was funny to read. It was very childish.
I look at it like this: if Romney had pulled out the win, the Democrats would be saying the same thing; it’d just be different people saying it.
As for the Republicans, they have no right to complain. After all, it was THEIR candidate who failed.
As I mentioned in a previous column, I don’t think Barack Obama has done a very good job in the past four years. I’m not in better shape than I was four years ago, and in fact, I’m in a lot worse shape. It wouldn’t have taken much for me to vote for someone else. I just couldn’t vote for Romney because I couldn’t tell which side he was on.
If the Republicans would have dug a little deeper, I’m sure they could have found someone better to run for the White House. I would have gladly voted for Rudy Giuliani. I didn’t mind some of Michelle Bachmann’s ideas. Rick Santorum could have given Obama a run for his money. I don’t think Ron Paul would have offered much of a challenge.
I would have voted for Rod Blagojevich before I voted for Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich.
Romney was nominated early with other Republican candidates dropping out of the race faster than raindrops in a downpour, and he seemed to be in charge. He picked his own running mate and announced him in advance of the national convention, a move I don’t recall ever seeing before.
Here in Elmwood, I didn’t get to vote in some of the elections I wanted to vote in. I was very interested in the Bustos-Schilling race for the 17th Congressional seat since it was heavily advertised, but as it turns out, Elmwood is outside their boundaries. I was also interested in the Koehler-Sullivan race for the 46th District Senate seat as it was also pushed on local TV. I’m outside their district as well.
In fact, there were only four or five contested races on my ballot with most of the questions asking if I wanted to retain judges or not. One of the contested races was between Aaron Schock and some guy I’d never heard of. I felt cheated.
I tend to be more conservative than liberal, but I have problems labeling myself a Democrat or Republican. That’s because both sides do some really dumb things that I don’t really want to be associated with. Then again, there’s some things that voters do that are pretty stupid as well.
Take for example the strange case of Derrick Smith. Smith was an Illinois House member from the 10th District in Chicago. Last March, the FBI put together a sting operation where they asked Smith to write a letter of recommendation for a fictitious day care center that would have sped up the licensing process. Smith allegedly agreed to write the letter after accepting an envelope with $7000 in cash in it.
He was arrested, but a week later, managed to win the primary race to be placed on the ballot of the general election, the one we had yesterday. The Republicans failed to nominate a candidate to oppose Smith who represents a very Democratic district.
In August, the General Assembly voted to kick Smith out. Yep, they told him they didn’t like him anymore, that he should be ashamed of himself, and in the meantime, go home and don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord creased ya.
On Tuesday, the guy WON reelection to the seat he got kicked out of. Not only did he win, he got 62% of the vote!
He had been opposed by Lance Tyson who was running as an independent (the Republicans didn’t have a candidate). Tyson had managed to gain endorsements from big names like Governor Pat Quinn and Secretary of State Jesse White, but voters evidently didn’t care and returned Smith to his seat.
Now here’s the real kicker. Since he’s already been kicked out of the House once, he can’t be kicked out for the same offense again. It’s sort of a double jeopardy.
I have to wonder just how stupid a voter has to be in order to elect someone who is up on these kind of charges.
Oh wait…. This is Illinois. I forgot about Blagojevich and Ryan.
Let’s try this one instead.
Challengers Brian Woodworth (Republican) and Marcus Lucas (Independent) together amassed a whopping 28.3% of the vote which wasn’t enough to beat someone who never spent a single minute campaigning, who never had a yard sign printed, and who hasn’t shown up for work in almost six months.
Jesse Jackson Jr, a US Congressman from Chicago quit showing up for his job back in June as he checked into a hospital in Arizona. After spending a month there, he headed for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN where he’s had a couple of stays. Reportedly, he’s being treated for a bipolar disorder in their wing for mental illnesses.
Evidently voters in the 2nd Congressional District don’t see any problem in paying his health care and paying him for being absent from work as they elected him in what qualifies as a landslide. The only thing Jackson did to campaign was to place robocalls to constituents in the days before the election.
I can understand someone being popular enough to win an election even though they’re sick; what I can’t understand is how someone can win by that margain!
I began wondering if maybe it was Jackson’s new neighbors in the mental ward that were voting for him. Then I realized, those people are ill. The people in the 2nd District evidently are just stupid.
I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to judge because I really don’t know anything about the people that these two ran against. After all, that’s why I voted for Blagojevich the last time he ran. I just couldn’t punch the button for someone so closely associated with George “that guy in the orange jumpsuit” Ryan (Judy Barr Topinka).
Sometimes the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don’t know.
Which is why Obama got my vote this time around.
