The Election

[shannon_a]

So, tomorrow is the election. If I were a good activist I'd go help GOTV tomorrow, but it's been a tough and tiring and sickly year and I don't have any sort of energy for that, so I'm just going to try and get the hell away from it all.

The plan is: vote; get a sandwich; ride down to Lake Merritt; have lunch; stop by EndGame; purchase Witch's Brew; go out to Alameda; ride the Bay Trail around the island; come home when it starts getting dark; go out to dinner; and only then look at election coverage (though it'll still be too early for local stuff).

Here's what I'm worried about for tomorrow:

Barack Obama. Unless every polling institute in the United States is wrong, even the ones with a Republican lean, I don't think Obama will lose. Or, to put it more clearly, I don't think McCain can win under any honest scenario. So, I'm less concerned here, but I do think it's a crying shame that Obama's grandmother, who raised him during his teenage years, died the day before his election.

Proposition 8. That this filthy piece of bigotry would be written into our state constitution is an affront against everything that the United States stands for. I also believe it's going to pass for reasons that I'm too tired to count. The question ultimately is going to be how long until it's overturned and how much it'll set equality rights back in the process. I hope I'm wrong.

Measure KK. This is a piece-of-shit Berkeley measure authored by the NIMBYs that unfortunately fill too many Berkeley homes. Because these idiots don't want Telegraph Avenue turned into a bus thoroughfare that would allow for real public transit alternatives between here and Oakland, they've put up a law that would make it illegal for Berkeley to redraw street lanes without voter approval. Yeah, really. I suspect it'll fuck the hell out of bike lanes just as much as it'll screw up AC Transit improvements. And people say Berkeley is progressive.

The Senate. I'm actually not too worried here, because I don't think the Democrats have a great chance of picking up their 60-vote majority, nor do I think it's a catastrophe if they don't. I would guess they'll end up with 56-58 seats. I think that in order to hit 60, Franken has to get lucky in Minnesota and there has to be a major upset in the Senatorial race in Georgia due to amazingly high African American turnout. So, it could happen, but it'd be a stretch.

But I do believe, whatever else happens, that tomorrow the end of our long, national nightmare will, at last, be in sight.

Comments

[webmacher.livejournal.com]

there is a reason that the Free Speech Movement happened in Berkeley - and it wasn't that Berkeley is super-liberal on everything... there's definitely some narrowmindedness and NIMBYness.