What We Will Not Have and What was Gained as a Result in the 2012 Election
Saturday, November 10, 2012
The country may not realize what they had actually accomplished by not voting for Mitt Romney for President. If he were successful in his bid for the highest office in the land, a slow destruction of a long list of accomplishments gained by this Democratic President Barack Obama would have happened.
Because of the vote, you are not going to have the following...
1) We are not going to have a supreme court that will overturn 'Roe vs. Wade'.
2) There will not be a repeal on health care reform. By 2014, Obamacare will be in full force.
3) No-one's going to kill medicare.
4) Millionaires and billionaires will not get 20% tax cuts, and expect programs like food stamps and child's health insurance tax cut for the rich. .
5) You will not have to clear it with your boss if you can get birth control through the insurance plan that you are on.
6) Rape will not be redefined.
7) U.S. Constitution will not be amended to stop gay people from getting married.
8) Guantanamo will not be doubled in size.
9) The Department of Energy, or the Department of Education, or housing at the
Federal level will not be eliminated.
10) An extra 2 trillion dollars will not be spent on the U.S. military even if they originally didn't want the money.
11)Student loans will not be scaled back, with the idea in mind that the new plan would think you should borrow money from your parents.
12)We will not be vetoing the 'Dream Act'.
13) We are not going to self deport. Romney was for it.
14) We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.
15) We are not starting a trade war with China on inauguration day in January.
16) We are not going to have as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. . Read that story right here..
17) We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton..
18) We are not bringing Dick Chaney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy stalked with architects of the Iraqi war. We have he choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and right now we said no on the night of the election.
To be fair if you were a conservative, a few things did go your way..
1) The Republicans did not loose that senate seat they may have lost in Arizona.. Another Republican was elected, Jeff Flake.
2) The Republicans did not lose that Senate seat in Nevada, the Republican incumbent Dean Heller won re-election.
3) Last election, the President carried 28 states in 2008, and lost a few to the Republicans this time, Indiana and North Carolina.
4) Remember the Thaddeus McCotter seat in Michigan? Because he screwed up, another guy whom the Republicans have dubbed as the shirtless reindeer guy, someone who could never win in Michigan and would end up in jail if the voters elected him, won the election.
Mainly because of redistricting, the Republicans were never in danger of loosing the house, but what they actually won is a very very short list.
But now let's focus on what went well for the Democrats last night.
1) Starting with the Senate race in Missouri, a woman who everyone thought would loose, Clair McCaskill won her Senate seat over the very controversial Todd Akin by a wide margin, 55% against 39% for the Republican incumbent Did the republicans think that the voters could ever forget the comments made by Todd Akin about women who get raped? Obviously not.
In Massachusetts, Scott Brown who won a surprise mid-term election when Ted Kennedy passed away in 2010, lost in the 2012 election to the foremost authority on the economic rights of the middle class, Elizabeth Warren. Why so? Maybe because he supported Mitt Romney for President so strongly, and voted against the wishes of a solidly Democratic state of Massachusetts The voters of that state wanted to accept his promise that he would be independent in his thinking and support for the state, but in the end, it was clear that he was bleeding red Republican blood, through and through. He lost mainly because of the gender gap. Women would not support him.
Instead of focusing the debate on him, he focused the debate on Elizabeth Warren, claiming that she could not possibly be 1/32 Cherokee Indian because as he said she should not possibly be a person of color, but "as you can see, she is not." Instead of his proving that she was not of color, he was insulting and showed prejudice against her race.
For marriage equality, same sex marriage, in the state of Maine, Maryland, voted for the measure. In Minnesota they were asked to vote against marriage equality, but the voters refused to ban it. In Washington state, they became the 9th state to vote for marriage equality.
A judge in Iowa, Judge Wiggens, kept his seat after supporting marriage equality.
Nevada elected it's first African American congressman, Steven Horsford, over Republican Danny Tarkanian.
In Wisconsin, the first openly gay United States woman senator was elected, along with a first ever to be elected Asian woman Senator for Hawaii.
Another woman, a Democratic Iraq war veteran, Tulsi Gabbard, age 32, a first Hindu member of the U.S. Congress for Hawaii. Gabbard previously served as Hawaii's youngest state representative, elected in 2002, and was the youngest woman in the United States to be elected to a state legislature. She is currently a Company Commander with the Hawaii Army National Guard, and has volunteered to serve on two deployments to the Middle East. She is also vice-president and co-founder of the environmental non-profit organization Healthy Hawaii Coalition. She is a woman to watch, because she is on the fast track of becoming very famous some day.
Another woman, Tammy Duckworth, who is a war veteran helicopter pilot who lost both of her legs in the Iraqi war has won election, and she is sending home someone who mocked her for her war record, Joe Walsh.
California relaxed it's 'three strikes your out' law. and rejected a law to cripple the power of unions. With the 'three strikes you're out law' repeat offenders of even non violent crime would get a 'life' sentence For second time offenders, it would double the penalty/jail sentence for first time repeat offenders. Repeat offenders would have to serve there time in prison, would not be eligible for parole. Juvenile convictions along with out of state convictions would count as strikes. Again, this law was overturned.
Decriminalization of marijuana was approved in the states of Washington and Colorado.
In North Dakota of all places, the Democrats gained a Senate seat. Another woman by the name of Heidi Heitkamp won election there over the Republican Rick Berg.
In Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia not only did Republicans loose the Presidential race, but they also lost the Senate race. There was a democratic sweep of the Presidency and of the Senate races took place, and the verdict is out for the state of Florida. But sometime around noon today, Saturday November 10, the verdict will be in and will be the major news story of the day as the votes will be revealed for that state.
Democratic women swept every major office in the state of New Hampshire.
In California, the Democrats won a 'super' majority in the state House and State Senate. That means that the Republicans are now completely legislatively irrelevant in the state of California.
More woman got elected to the U.S. Senate than any time in U.S. history.
Both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan lost the Presidential races in their respective home states.
Missouri, Montana and West Virginia chose Democratic Governors.
West Virginia and North Dakota chose their first gay person for their legislature.
Joe Leiberman's old seat went to a Democrat in Connecticut named Chris Murphy.
The proportion of young people voting compared to 2008 went up, and also with African Americans and Latinos.
President Obama was not only re-elected to the Presidency, but he will go down in history as one of the most successful Presidents since FDR. Not only did he get re-election with big electoral margins, but he won re-election with a majority of voters in the popular vote and now he did it twice.
