Election 2012 part 2

I’m not really sure who to vote for. I know people are going crazy about it. Either Obama is the epitome of evil and Romney is our only salvation, or the other way around. I don’t think it’s all that extreme. I don’t think all life as we know it will end if the wrong person is elected. America is stronger than one man, no matter which state he comes from, what religion he claims or how his skin looks. We’ve had a few pretty bad presidents, a few pretty good presidents and mostly something in between. Life carried on either way. I’m sure all the candidates would do good things and bad things. And when I say man, I mean man. I doubt the average American will vote for a woman in my lifetime. “But what about Hillary Clinton?” She will never be president. I’m willing to cover all bets on that.

What I don’t like is that I don’t really like any of the candidates. I don’t hate any of them and I’m not going to leave the country when whoever I don’t vote for is elected. And I guarantee that whoever I vote for will absolutely not win. I already left the country. I think if you’re one of those people who threatens to leave the country when the other side wins then you don’t get how democracy works. Sometimes the other side wins. Deal with it. Your side will win again sooner or later.

I think the worst thing is voting on sides. We should be voting for people, not parties. If it’s football, you vote for your team. Go Vikings. If it’s deciding who should run the country, you should vote for the person you think will do the best job. The odds of your party always picking the better person are too impossible to believe.

We’re so divided now that we want to reduce everyone to a party stereotype. He’s a Republican, so he must hate poor people and women. She’s a Democrat, so she must love taxes and government dependency. Most people never fit whatever stereotype you want to label them with.

The pundits and talking heads seem to want every state to be red or blue, as if no one from Texas ever votes for Democrats and no one from California ever votes for Republicans. People want to label California the liberal hippie blue state, but California voted for Reagan, four times. He was their Governor. They had a lot of red Governors. Texas put Lyndon Johnson in congress for 100 years. Texas had a lot of blue Governors.

Minnesota is currently considered a blue state, but we’re not so easy to label. We elected Michele Bachmann, Al Franken and Jesse Ventura. I never voted for any of them. Jesse was before my time, Michele isn’t in my district and Al was elected before I was old enough to vote.