The Day After

This is the thought that keeps running through my mind - if this incumbent, with this record, running this campaign, can beat this challenger, what is America in 2012?  And what hope is there for ever returning to a society of individual rights and strong economic growth?

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces...

- Abraham Lincoln

But that seems to be what we've come to.  I keep thinking about the arguments of the slave-holders, that their system was in fact a kindness, more humane than the free labor system of the north, because their slaves had free food and housing and social security.

I went to bed last night, long before it was all called, because it started trending badly early, and I knew that I needed to get some sleep, and I wouldn't otherwise.  Slept until about four, woke to the depressing, but at that point not unexpected, news that we have four more years of Barack Obama to look forward to. I haven't read the returns, don't know what happened, or where, and frankly, don't much care.  I know that Scott Brown lost.  I know that rugged individualist "Live Free Or Die" New Hampshire has given up the ghost and become MA north politically.

Horrified by what's happened the last four years.  Terrified by what's to come in the next four.

One of the things that's coming soon, has probably already started, is the recriminations from those who didn't support Romney in the primary against those who did.  Let me just say this - the idea that another one of those candidates, be it Gingrich or Santorum or Perry or whoever, would have run a better campaign, or come closer to winning, strikes me as extremely far-fetched.

And this is not time for recriminations, because this is not a campaign failure or a candidate failure.  This is a system failure, and we need to figure out how to fix it.  Things are going to get worse before they get better, but if just letting them get worse until everyone sees how bad they are is the cure to the political problems, we're never going to get them fixed.