Election Redux

I don't have much to add to all the great karma and good feeling all of us have felt since Barack Obama was elected our president on Tuesday night.  I tempted the fates by posting most of my feelings about this election on Monday night.  But that did not jinx the electorate on Tuesday, and at 11 pm eastern we got the country back when Obama passed 270 electoral votes.

[FYI: Nicholas Kristoff paraphrased my pre-election blog in today's New York Times. He didn't have the stones to write the BEFORE the election.]

The good people in this country finally asserted themselves on November 4th, and I can't stop smiling.

This election is the good news that keeps on giving.  Today North Carolina was called for Barack Obama as the Tar Heel State finally put in all together and went Carolina blue in 2008. With North Carolina, Obama is up to 364 landslide-like electoral votes.  For decades, citizens, observers and activists have waited for the combination of African-Americans, new residents drawn by the banking and high tech industries, and Carolina alumni to make North Carolina a blue, or at least purple, state.  It came true this year, not only for Obama but for Senator-elect Kay Hagen and the new governor, Beverly Purdue.  

A negro and two skirts winning state wide? Jesse Helms is spinning in his grave.

The Hagen win - actually the Dole loss - is icing on the Barackake. Elizabeth Dole was an empty suit, a celebrity who won on her name, not her address.  How appropriate to see the tide turn against her after the News and Observer uncovered the fact that Dole had spend almost no time in the state during her six years in office.  Dole hasn't lived in North Carolina since she graduated from the University of Long Island at Durham almost 60 years ago, and didn't deserve to represent the Old North State in the U.S. Senate.   Glad to see you go Sen. Dole; now move back to the Watergate - where you've live for the last 30 years - and leave us alone.

World Series Update

Good article in the new Sports Illustrated about how the World Series does not live up to the quality or popularity of the baseball season. It was good to see a real media outlet mimic some of CHB blog's points about limiting visits to the mound and starting World Series games earlier, especially on the weekend.

Baseball and Barack

Another good article on Sports Illustrated's website about Obama's ability to get baseball and softball back in the Olympics.  The thinking is that one reason those two sports were voted off the island is anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment.  With Obama's election that sentiment should be reversed, reversed enough to have our national pass-time back in the Olympics.