Fork...

Ladies and gentlemen, stick a fork in this election because it is just about done. Tonight we’re all watching one of the last things I ever imagined I’d see in my lifetime. It looks like the country is once again evenly divided and unless there’s a significant departure from how things look now, we’ll have a President-Elect Obama sometime very late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Senator McCain has been a good and faithful servant of the republic and watching this American hero go down in defeat is far more bitter to me than it is sweet. My only hope now is that Senator Obama proves worthy of the trust that his countrymen are about to repose in him.

Early Voting...

In one of the great lines that endeared him to the party faithful, Ronald Reagan once told his fellow Republicans "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me." My feelings about the Republican Party are more or less the same. My Republican Party, the party of Reagan, has been hijacked by fanatics and religious extremists inflexible on a single issue and unable to see a broader policy agenda. The Republican Party left me and for the first time since I registered to vote in 1996, today I voted for a Democrat at the top of the national ticket. I take no joy in it, as I believe John McCain is a good and true servant of the republic, but the thought of a vice president who doesn't believe in evolution or in letting kids talk about sex in an academic setting and who thinks that living near Russia counts as foreign policy experience is more than I could bear. America deserves better than either of our alternatives this year and in the end I cast my vote for who I believe is the least bad alternative.

Conflicted…

For the first time in my adult life, I’m actually conflicted over who will get my vote in a presidential election. Ideologically, neither major party candidate represents my general positions. McCain has me covered with his notions on defense, smaller government, and lower taxes across the board, but Palin terrifies me on social issues. Obama has a prayer of a chance of unifying the 75% of the country that aren’t insane rednecks, but I’m deeply troubled by his positions on foreign policy and taxation. I’ll be doing the whole early voting thing next weekend here in West Tennessee due to out of state travel plans on election day, but as it stands now, my vote is still thoroughly up for grabs. Right now it’s even odds and with the clock running down, I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that.