George W Bush Is Re-Elected!

So I woke up fairly early this morning (before 9) so that I could get caught up on reading about all the happenings to that point on Election Day, which took awhile. I did some laundry, read some more stuff, keeping constantly updated on what was happening, through several news sites online (CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, Drudge, BBC, etc), along with a healthy dose of NRO for more of the behind-the-scenes happenings and chatter. For around 2-3 hours this afternoon I was watching election returns on TV as well. I found out that Channel 9 was carrying a CBS feed (eww), and Channel 7 was broadcasting an NBC feed. Yay! It was cool getting to see at least a little bit of it on TV, it made me feel like I was a little bit more a part of it for some strange reason. But then Channel 7 stopped their coverage for the local news at 4:30, I flipped it over to 9, but could only take Dan Rather for about 10-15 minutes before I had to come back and get a dose of reality again with NRO, as well as chatting with friends back home about what was going on (happy, neutral and upset parties, hehe). I’m sure you’re all very aware of what’s going on, but it’s been interesting to see that NBC and FOX are still sticking by their call of Ohio for Bush, although it’s quite odd how neither of them are also calling Nevada for Bush, like ABC, CBS and AP all did. At any rate, the long and the short of it is that it’s painfully obvious that Bush has been re-elected. He’s won Ohio, even if the provisional ballots haven’t been counted yet. Bush has a lead of 145,000 votes, and most estimates say that there are around 150,000 provisional ballots out there. In other words, for Kerry to pull off a miracle, he’d need an astronomical majority of those votes to be for him, and there’s just no way he’s gonna make up 145,000 votes. If Kerry had even the class of Nixon, he would’ve conceded late last night when it became clear that he was losing Ohio. Instead he trotted out Johnny Edwards, had him introduced as the “next VP of the United States,” where Edwards proceeded to give a speech that sounded way too much like the Gore un-concession speech in Florida in 2000. I don’t think this country will stand for another long recount process, especially with a 145,000 vote advantage for Bush in Ohio, and 3.7 million vote advantage nationwide.
Bush got the most votes ever for an American presidential candidate, he was the first son of a former president to win re-election, and with 51% nationally he was also the first President to win a super-majority of the popular vote since George H. W. Bush in 1988; not even Clinton got 50% either time (he got 43% in 1992, 49% in 1996). Plus, the Republicans captured four seats in the Senate, pushing them up to 55 seats, and they increased their majority in the House as well. Overall it was a very good night for Republicans and conservatives. I think tonight proved that the United States is not quite as divided as the mainstream media is still saying it is. Even Senate Minority Leader Tom “Puff” Daschle was knocked off by John Thune in South Dakota! That’s the first time a Senate leader has been defeated in a re-election bid in half a century. The downer of the night came when Sen. Arlen Specter (Republican) was re-elected in Pennsylvania. I was really annoyed when I found out he had won, as he’s a RINO (Republican in Name Only). Why on earth did Bush campaign for Specter back during the primaries? Specter’s been campaigning for Kerry ever since. Oh well, you can’t win everything. Just like Bush lost Wisconsin by less than 14,000 votes, sigh. But my parents were able to confirm when they voted this evening that my absentee ballot had in fact arrived at the polling place, yay! I love living in a small precinct where you can find that sort of stuff out. 🙂
Well, I should probably get a start on cleaning my room a bit, Uriah’s comin tomorrow and probably is gonna stay in my room, at least one of the next two nights, maybe both. And seeing as how I haven’t cleaned it at all this semester… yeah. I’ll probably be hangin out with him in Melbourne at least one of the next three days. And at some point I’ve gotta start crackin on studying for the General GRE, which I’m takin on Monday here in Melbourne. The studying just never stops, argh.
Even if CNN doesn’t “officially” call Ohio for Bush, I’m not worried tonight. I can sleep easy tonight knowing that George W Bush will be the President of the United States of America for the next four years. 🙂