Published: November 10, 2008 04:43 pm            

CURRAN: The Tuesday after

A week has passed since our historic election that so many of us were engaged. A whopping 60 percent showed up to vote. That’s more than half! Actually, due to deadline issues, it sure seems like only a couple of days ago to me. And I need closure on a few points.

We’re better than we thought

It appears this really was the year voters tired of the negative campaigning that focused on the small and silly. There was the feeling early on something was different this year. The saddest shame is that the John McCain that stood up to his own supporters and gave such an incredible concession speech was so absent from the last several months of his campaign. I really like that guy. He could’ve been president.

It has been argued that negative campaigning works and running clean is a losing strategy. That argument was made by Mike Sodrel, Republican opponent to Democratic winner Baron Hill for Indiana’s 9th Congressional seat. Sodrel ran no negative ads; the Democratic Party ran one against him. The correlation looks bad, but it’s more likely Sodrel was just on the wrong side of a Democratic wave for national offices. Though his campaign was more active and name more recognizable this year, Libertarian candidate Eric Schansberg also saw his percentage of the 9th District vote slip from 2006.

No goin’ all mavericky on Washington, D.C., this year

No candidate kept the reality-show motif of the primaries going during the general election like McCain’s vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. She kept Trig, supported Bristol, accepted Levi and put her ex-brother-in-law in his place. Todd’s a hottie. I wonder where she shops. Nevermind. We all know. We also know, or have been told by gossipy/traitorous McCain aides, that she’s a diva who didn’t know Africa was a continent rather than a country. She’s already testing the waters for a 2012 run of her own. Please don’t let us so block out the last eight years that we do it again.

Hoosiers more practical than partisan

Another encouraging sign of voter sanity is our ticket-splitting tendency. We went for Obama nationally and other national seats got some help there. We kept our Republican governor and promoted our Republican superintendent to state office, but Clark County retained the practice of filling local seats with Democrats. The lack of herd mentality is heartening.

Darn you Kathleen Parker

While perusing the bios of local candidates, it struck me that some Democrats appeared reluctant to declare who they would be voting for as president. I wondered if Indiana might experience a “Reverse Bradley Effect.” The Bradley Effect is when white voters tell a pollster they will vote for a black candidate but don‘t. The name comes from a California gubernatorial race in which the black candidate was polling well ahead just before the election — then lost.

It occurred to me that in Indiana it would be more likely someone would be reluctant to admit they were voting for the black candidate, then do so in the privacy of the voting booth. Between the time I thought of it and sat down to write my next column, Kathleen Parker used the exact term for the exact phenomena in her big, fancy national column. I am not Barack Obama. I can be petty. So, Ms. Parker, I thought of it too and maybe first.

Can we handle it?

Another way to contrast the values of this election with the last few would be to say hope beat fear. Critics have charged Bush and Co. with exploiting fear of terrorism to win votes and power. Republicans have also been accused of using fear of gays as a tactic. Post-election reactions confirm this fear-mongering.

“I’m scared.”

“This is the end of America.”

What has Fox News done to you poor people? I heard stories about Obama’s birth certificate being fake, and he wasn’t really born in the U.S. He is going to call bin Laden for foreign-policy advice. We’re going to turn into a communist country within his first term. We’re going to be attacked because he is weak and sympathetic to our enemies.

It’s true that his promises tend toward socialism, but so have many policies since the New Deal. Changes have been incremental and will continue to be until we turn against the idea of government as parent. The rest is just nuts. The guy campaigned for two years and ran for Senate and state Senate before that. We know as much about the “real” Barack Obama as we know about any public person. There’s no monster under the bed, just a centrist Democrat.

I Heart Reagan

I’ve always had a soft spot for Ronald Reagan. Maybe it’s my age relative to his time as president. Obama would not be our president-elect if not for an amazing ability to communicate and inspire. Tuesday was the anniversary of Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, which contrasted optimism with malaise. I know you partisans won’t get it, but that really works for me somehow. It seems right.

Young Hope

The number of Hoosier votes for Obama doesn’t reflect his number of supporters because so many were under 18. My kids and their friends were among the army of volunteers working more hours than a part-time job and suffering abuse from mean people to support their guy. Now that inspires hope.

Although Jeffersonville resident Kelley Curran has developed new images for the words “hope” and “maverick,” she continues to think of Alaska as mostly a half-baked dessert. Write her at Kelinawriterhat@aol.com

        

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