Indies

Set aside any Obama euphoria you feel. The other important news is that third-party presidential candidates had a miserable showing this year, totaling just over one percent of the grand total with 1.5 million votes nationwide, compared to some 123 million votes for Barack Obama and John McCain.

From Michigan's Supreme Court race to the many incumbent losses in the House of Representatives, to the incumbent losses in the Senate (Oregon's Smith, N. Carolina's Dole, New Hampshire's Sununu), the anti-incumbent vote made its presence very visible in this election. It was decidedly an anti-incumbent vote against the GOP. However, both major parties can no longer ignore the power of the independent voters (6% of whom decided the Democratic direction of this race), nor the power of voters exercising their right and obligation to vote out incumbents when government disappoints the voters.

Voting out congressional incumbents failed this year, showing the anti-incumbency movement to be a clear letdown. For some years many groups and their websites have been advocating voting out congressional incumbents as an effective means to reform government and make it work better. Two of the better ones are Vote Out Incumbents Democracy and Tenure Corrupts.

As early as 8PM this evening, we may have clear indications as to who our next president may be. Be that as it may, there are an enormous number of other important races and candidates to be determined from the Eastern most point of Maine to the Western most tip of Hawaii. For 10's of millions of Americans today, a case of the blues will try to settle in because their horse didn't cross the finish line in first place. But, this election is as much about process as results. And the process, though in desperate need of reform, continues to work.

As always, elections are about variables so myriad as to make polling effective only in trend for some elections, and entirely unreliable in others. It appears to me this 2008 election however, is about a crisis in confidence toward authority, and the presidential winner will be the person having shown the most credible judgement.

McCain/Palin and other Republican politicians running for office are throwing the 'socialist' tag at their Democratic opponents in the hopes it will stick to voter's foreheads while lining up to vote. Rather odd and illogical tactic unless they are targeting voters who have been oblivious to the socialist doubling of the national debt by Republicans these last 7 and 3/4 years.

Most American tax payers could not give a definition of the term "opportunity cost". Just as most Americans could not tell you what al-Queda was, prior to 9/11, 2001. Not knowing however, did not stop al-Queda from attacking America, and not knowing what opportunity cost is, will not stop those oppressive and suffocating costs from forcing future tax increases on income earners in America and pushing the nation toward bankruptcy.

The last of the debates is now history. According to polls, Sen. Obama won each and every one of them. According to the polls, Obama is ahead in enough battleground states to make the Electoral College map his for the next 4 years. Obama put together and ran an immensely successful grass roots campaign. His judgment and decisions in the management of his campaign suggest that he can be an effective president. Why then, the semi-subconscious suspicion that Obama will not become our next president?

The hardest thing for Americans to do right now in this presidential election season is to fight distraction and, instead, focus on the failure of all three branches of the federal government. And also to resist the propaganda masquerading as patriotic obligation that voting will fundamentally fix the federal government. The real lesson of American history is that things have turned so ugly that electing a new president and many new members of Congress will at best provide band-aids when what is needed is nothing less than what Thomas Jefferson wisely said our nation would need periodically: a political revolution.

America has a future. American's have a future. In many ways, it will not look like our past. What is happening right now is a revolution, a political, economic, and cultural revolution. There is no choice about it. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, certain concepts and ideas were put to the test, and in 2007 and 2008, those concepts and ideas brought our economy crashing down, driving 10's of millions of voters to leave the two major political parties, and opening the door to dramatic cultural change going forward.