Nov 5, 2008: The Day After

Well despite my best hope and wishes, my candidate did not win. First thing first, congratulation to Obama for a historic win. I can only hope he will do his best for this country. Now on to the analysis.

Why McCain lost.
1. He could not effectively communicate his hopes and goals for America under his leadership.
2. He ran a bi-partisan campaign in a partisan election.
3. He was a foreign policy expert when the country needed an economic expert (he should have voted against the bail-out bill)
(4. Bush failed to effectively explain his actions and allowed his good work to be misrepresented)

Why Obama won.
1. The country was ready for change, and bought his message.
2. He effectively presented himself as a template for voters to leave their own impression on who he is
3. He had the money to win.


What comes next.
1. The Democrats do not have super majority in the Senate or the House. This is the brightest spot for Republicans and Conservatives.
2. The Republicans will need to regroup for 2010. There will be finger pointing and there will be skirmishes. I will look more into this later.
3. Sarah Palin will have to decide what she wants to do regarding 2012. If she wants to run for the nomination, then she will have to start the preparation now, define her her political philosophy, gather her supporters, build her network, accumulate both foreign policy and economic credentials, and start thinking strategy and tactics for 2012. In many way, as a Palin supporter, I do feel that last night loss will allow Palin to campaign as an outsider running against the DC establishment in 2012. This is a small bright spot. Currently, if she does win the party nomination in 2012, I think she should pick a reform minded congressman or senator from California or Florida, perhaps a Hispanic? I will definitely have more thoughts on Palin in the next 4 years.


Again, last night was a huge disappointment. But there are also opportunities to be grabbed for the future.

Final thought. The biggest problem with racism in the US is not bigotry but the culture of victimhood when you are a minority. i hope that with Obama's win there will be less "woe is me because America is KKK."