Pundits

After two agonizing years and a billion dollars the American election campaigns are finally over. The Blue team won, while the Red team crashed and burned.

The smoke is still rising from the Red team’s disastrous defeat and the pundits are dissecting every move and counter move of the campaign. In the joyous Blue Camp they are trying to figure out how to best capitalize on the “big MO” (momentum). The dejected Red camp is busy point fingers, calling names and denying responsibility for any part in the disaster.

From the back woods the view is that the Blues ran an incredibly good campaign that focused on the peoples’ interest and needs. The Blue campaign reached out to where the votes are the center. They looked past their loquacious leftist base to moderate conservatives, reassured moderate leftist while courting the independent centrist.

A good deal of credit for the Blue victory must go to the Red’s incredibly bad campaigning. If a campaign mistake could be made, they made it. Their first mistake was to embrace its rabid right instead of creating a coalition of policies. If any other running mate had been chosen the results could have been different. Instead of a campaign of voter reassurance it was a campaign of hate and fear. Most of all it was a campaign that sacrificed its presidential candidate’s greatest asset, his integrity. Red campaigners looked at the 2004 electoral map and decided it just had to hold on to the past.

Times had changed and conservatives have difficulty with change. The Reds failed to understand the dissatisfaction with the current administration policies and how deep are the economic fears of the country. There was an absence of hope from the Reds while the Blues bubbled over with hope.

It is now up to the Blue team to roll hope into policies that will united a divided nation into one that the world will again respect. Not an easy task, but one that is possible by reaching out to all the people.

The good news is that campaign 2008 is over, the bad news is that campaign 2012 has already begun. Is there no hope of peace for the voters?
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