Sorry I'm not posting more lately. Lots of stuff to do here and every once in a while, I succumb to this strange urge to actually sleep.
I find myself unable to turn loose of the election. I should look away until such time as Obama is in office and actually doing things but it's hard. And of course, parts of the election are still not over. Some but not all have called Missouri for McCain…and then you have things like the Senate race in Minnesota where Norm Coleman is, at last look, only 221 votes ahead of Al Franken with a mandatory recount ahead. I've met Franken and think he's a smart, serious fellow so, above and beyond the fact that it would give the Democrats a tad more clout, I'd like to see him win it.
But of greater interest to me is yet another piece of evidence on how sloppy our voting procedures are in this country. They're still finding votes that weren't tallied and the recount hasn't even started yet. When it does, thousands of ballots that weren't counted because the optical scanners registered "no vote" on them may yield even more votes.
Sadly, no one ever looks at these situations and sees anything more than their guy winning or losing. I wish someone would react by saying that regardless of outcome, we oughta do a better job of counting votes. You wouldn't put your money in a bank that days after people made their deposits was still finding checks that hadn't been processed…and which then said it would take weeks to get you an accurate balance. But we trust our votes to a system with that low a level of precision.
Protests are erupting all over California over the outcome of Proposition 8. I'm dismayed at it too but apart from blowing off steam, I'm not sure what the protests can accomplish. What might be meaningful is to use that anger to jumpstart fund-raising efforts to put this matter on the next ballot, whenever that is, and vote again. The previous time Californians weighed in on same-sex marriage, it lost by 22 points. This time, it was four — and in an election where, some claim, the loss was due to an unusual number of Afro-Americans turning out to vote for Obama. I dunno how much of a difference that made but it seems to me that if you lose by 22 and then by four, the next time is more than likely to go your way.
John McCain will be on with Leno on Tuesday. The Republican nominee needs to rehabilitate his image with some Americans so it'll be a lot of self-deprecating remarks and Good Sport platitudes about how "the voters have spoken" and "we all need to get behind our new president." I'm sure he'll be charming and funny and he may even be the "old" John McCain (as opposed to the old John McCain) who some of us might have supported if he'd been on the ballot. What would really impress me is if he sat down with Jay and said, "You know, I hope America will understand that all that stuff we said about him being a terrorist and socialist was just crap we made up to try and get votes." Somehow, I don't expect that to happen.
I think Sarah Palin has a huge future catering to the Fox News audience — TV deals, book offers, speaking engagements, etc. There's a lot of money and fame to be harvested there…certainly a lot more than you'd ever hope to realize as Governor of Alaska. There may even be more influence over the directions in which America heads. I don't think she has any future in being elected to any office voted on by non-Alaskans but it may advance that other career path to maintain her '12 candidacy for a while, and maybe even to get into the Senate if Ted Stevens gets elected and then expelled. But the G.O.P. leadership is not going to allow the ascendancy of a candidate they couldn't even trust to give a press conference or to sit down with any interviewer more challenging than Sean Hannity. Sixty-some percent of Republicans say they'd like to see Palin head the 2012 ticket but that number will plunge as soon as someone emerges who can offer her agenda and answer questions without providing monologue fodder. And don't think there won't be someone.
By the way: I'm not writing this stuff for your benefit so much as mine. Putting it up here seems to help me to stop thinking about it, which in turn enables me to focus on that which needs to be done in my life. I'm going to post another video link, then go try to do some of those things. Happy Sunday.