Palin 2012

Well, the longest election campaign is now over and I certainly wish the results were different.

Nevertheless, congratulations are certainly in order for President-elect Obama. While I don’t agree with some of the financial doings of his campaign or some of his policy positions, he certainly ran a successful campaign. His success is due in large part to the campaign’s grassroots outreach. I was consistently impressed by all the local campaign activity I saw. It’s important that a whole new group(s) of voters turned out this year. Note – more people did not vote; but different groups turned out and…some stayed home.

In the past, it has been social conservatives who have succeeded at turning out the grassroots. Hopefully, lessons will be learned from this election cycle. The values voters, by and large, appeared to have opted out. (I’m still trying to understand how a Democrat controlled Congress with approval ratings of 12% manages to gain seats, but that is another question. The Wall Street Journal has this analysis which explains the economic misteps that paved the way for yesterdays’ victory.)

This election season clearly manifested one thing – a desire for new (younger?) leaders. The responses to both President-elect Obama and Governor Palin demonstrate that even if much of the positive response to the latter was not reported by the media.

Going forward, there’s much to be learned and improved upon. But my hope is that Governor Palin’s candidacy will have prompted a whole new generation of politicians, especially women – politicians who understand and campaign on the fact that the basis of a democracy rests upon whether the rights of all its citizens are protected from conception until natural death.  After all, look at what the governor did in just three months. Despite the naysayers in her own party, she continued to draw crowds and, I think, win votes. Get back to the values voters (who, by the way, won the 2000 & 2004 elections). Palin 2012.