2012 elections

The United States’ system of government was created for a more representative government across all spectrums of society and flexibility to adjust to the changing norms of societal and economic realities with the passage of time. Political parties are not included in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. In the present, when the Founding Fathers, perhaps George Washington most of all, are revered to the point of demi-god status, two political parties have flourished and seeped into most mechanisms of government at the federal and state level. The practical applications of democracy in the United States need to be changed. 

The Tea Party’s brand of patented loose cannon obstructionism is too threatening to a GOP still reeling from the election flop. The ouster of the Tea Party hardliners and desertions by GOP bigwigs from the movement was hardly the first rumbling that the lights are dimming for the Tea Party. A year earlier, polls showed that far more Americans had an unfavorable view of the Tea Party than when it roared on the scene a couple of years earlier. The disaffection cut across all lines and that included many conservatives. 

If no one else is rejoicing about the systemic inconveniences imposed on Florida voters on Election Day, where waits as long as eight hours to cast a ballot were endured and witnessed by thousands of voters, the state’s former senators Mike Bennett and Ellyn Bogdanoff should be elated.  "I want people in Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who walks 200 miles across the desert,” Bennett said in 2011 when sponsoring legislation to impose stricter voting requirements. 

Republicans, meanwhile, went about lying with their customary abandon. They slandered the president as, variously and sometimes all at once, Kenyan-born (Donald Trump’s meme); an apologist for Islamic terrorism (Mr. Romney himself, in accusing the president of sympathizing with Benghazi murderers); a secret homosexual (Jerome Corsi, a popular conspiracy theorist and member of the Romney campaign press corps); and a heretic of possibly Christian persuasion who, in supporting same-sex marriage, has “shaken his fist at God” (the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy).

But on November 4, 2008, Friday spoke up loud and clear and eloquently, and declared himself an equal. And his voice is reaffirmed on November 6, 2012. He tells us to dare to dream big, for change has already come and the world forever changed. He tells us to dare to dream big, even this once considered impossible dream: Son of Africa becomes the new patriarch of America.The old curse ends. 

It is inflection point in the arc of history because an African-American president was re-elected even though unemployment was at nearly 8 percent, and Republicans threw absolutely everything at him it was possible to throw, from "You lie!" to their vow to make him "a one-term president," to driving the nation to the brink of financial insolvency rather than negotiating in good faith over the national debt. 

It is predicted that voter turnout among young people, especially college students, will be higher than before. Political activism has been gradually rising among students since the 2004 election between Bush and Kerry. The most recent election in 2008 resulted in a 2.1 percent increase of student voters (51.1 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29). Although the exact figures are still unknown, it is expected that more and more students will get involved this year; at least, at a level which is higher than average.

In the wake of a severe storm that paralyzed many of our eastern states in the blink of an eye, President Barack Obama is on the case with all the federal resources that he can muster and at the same damn time, he’s working hand-in-hand with governors of the affected states. While we can’t help but to recall the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the ineptness that President George W. Bush displayed – costing lives and affecting the displacement of a myriad of Gulf Coast residents (many of whom are still disenfranchised) – on the other hand, we believe this president is cut from an entirely different cloth.