Election 2008: The Aftermath

The election of Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States was inspiring in so many ways, not just the fact of his skin color.

Statistics show that voter turnout - 64.1% - was the highest in a century. The Democrats expanded their majorities in both houses of Congress. Among the Republican casualties was North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole.

Democrats took open Republican Senate seats in Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. Mark Warner won the open seat in the Old Dominion; Tom Udall won in New Mexico and his cousin Mark took the seat in Colorado. And Republican Saxby Chambliss will be forced into a runoff in Georgia next month with Democrat Jim Martin.

It appears that America has gone as far to the right as it's going to go . . . except, possibly, in California, where homosexual marriage has been banned five short months after the state's Supreme Court allowed it.

In my home state, we seem to have gone back to the pattern of a hundred years ago, when the only New Jerseyans who can count on winning elections are Democrats and Frelinghuysens - Rodney Frelinghuysen was elected to another term in the House, but Democrats gained an open House seat in the Third District vacated by a Republican, electing Jim Adler. However, Republican Leonard Lance - not a Frelinghuysen - won the open House seat in the Seventh District.

I'm worn out. I'm still enjoying my birthday today. :-)

More later . . .