Hope.

Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.

So I went to bed last night hearing the tail end of Obama's speech on the radio, because my DirecTV is down right now because of some wiring issues. I didn't have a particular emotion or reaction to the result. Then this morning I had a sort of morose feeling and thought of my epigram.

The Democrat's House majority is the largest they've had in 15 years. They have control of the Senate too, with Biden's vote to break any ties. Until Mid-Term Elections in 2010, they have the mandate of the people and control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government. I hope for their and Obama's sake that they make hay while the sun is shining, because if they don't, they might not get another shot for a while.

I have friends that are staunch Democrats, and I have friends that are staunch Republicans (they still hold a grudge for when FDR let cattle die in the fields to boost beef prices.) My Republican friend tells me that in 2010 Bush's tax cuts expire. So the promise of no tax increases from Obama will be tested at that point, because he also promises $1 trillion in domestic spending in the first two years (more than the entire Iraq war has cost to this point), for the poor essentially. Another thing I never heard from McCain when talking about tax cuts for corporations and small businesses is that the government and the IRS receive their largest revenues after tax cuts. 2006 and 2007 were record revenue years after Bush's tax cuts. Apparently when people don't have as many taxes they are more willing to use their money to stimulate the economy especially if they are the corporate types that can have a large impact with their spending. I don't know if any of these things are true.

But I do know that after caucusing for Obama in February (Nebraska's first such event), I realized that people I really don't like at all wanted Obama to win. So for the sake of Schadenfreude, I wanted to see their reaction if he lost, plus the Democrats have a knack for messing up elections they should win, so it is fun to pile on them. I still couldn't vote for McCain because I don't like him (or Palin) or his policies in comparison to Obama, so the other alternative was Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root, the Libertarian ticket.

I voted Libertarian in the last Presidential election because I'm a usually a one issue man and my issue that year was the legalization of marijuana. But this year I actually went to their website and read their stance on the "issues." I really liked what they said. I knew that they were for small government, and with it smaller taxes, but I didn't know about their faith in Capitalism and the free market or their Ron Paul-like passion for the Constitution. I loved how they want to get out of Iraq, not for any moral reasons or because of the horrors of war, but because it costs too much and the longer we prop them up economically the longer it will take them to stand on their own. I once did a research paper about the financial burden of capital punishment, so that was right up my alley. They are kinda out there when it comes to the education system, but every platform needs some weak planks to give it some character. So they got my vote.

Back to that morose feeling. I think it comes from a couple places. One is that the people I wanted to see disappointed were overjoyed. Another is that I get the feeling that Black people think this is a victory for them, and that they feel they are better than others because they won. And maybe I'm upset because I'm racist at heart, and I realize that I'm racist, and that isn't a good thing to be. I hope not.