# 93 Hail and Farewell

Sounds kind of Roman, doesn't it. This election, nationally at least, turned out very well. Several states still haven't been called, and the Senate is not quite set yet, but we have a new President, a new direction, and a slightly stronger Democratic majority in Congress.

We will have to see the extent to which Barack Obama can actually execute his pledge last evening to work with both parties. The Republican party has been nationally chastised for its decades-long partisanship and, frankly, greed, so its members may be willing to work with the new president for awhile.

The country is still divided in many ways, one symbol of which was pointed out last night. I haven't verified this, but one of the CNN commentators indicated that, as of the new Congress taking office in January, there will be no Republican representatives in the House of Representatives from any of the New England states. All are Democrats. On the other hand, Obama made very strong inroads into the former Red-States midwest. As Eugene McCarthy was fond of quoting, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

I was correct weeks ago in awarding VA, IA, CO, NV, and NM to Obama, but didn't have enough faith in the good people of Ohio, Indiana, and Florida to recognize that, once the newfangled voting machines got fixed, they might actually vote Democratic. The same may be said of NC if it goes Blue, and possibly of MO and MT.

We have a chance now to put the racial divide behind us. We have clearly begun that process. This election was a national catharsis, a cleansing of Reagan's trickle-down economic philosophy, and of dubya's domestic-greed philosophy and shoot-from-the-hip foreign policy. He wanted a legacy? He got it. Certainly the worst president in my lifetime, and possibly in all of American history.

Thank you for joining me as we followed election developments and projected into the future. That future has arrived. Let us hope that it fulfills our wishes.

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