The morning after: Half of us will be disappointed

The morning after: Half of us will be disappointed

By TED ANTHONY
AP National Writer


PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The meteorologists tell us that Wednesday morning in southwestern Pennsylvania's largest city will be crisp and sunny with a high of 64. That's about all we know. Being a weather forecast, it offers nothing about the political climate that will have been created by the election the day before.

The outlook is obvious but often overlooked: In a deeply divided nation, on the first dawn after we choose a new leader, every ray of victory's sunshine brings a corresponding thundercloud of defeat and bitterness.

"There are going to be a whole bunch of people who are distraught and who won't know what to do - no matter which side wins," says Chris Ivey, 36, a Pittsburgh filmmaker and ardent Barack Obama supporter. "People will try to go back to their routine, but there's going to be a lot of soul-searching to do."

On Wednesday, roughly half of Americans will awaken to find that the horse they backed disappointed them. That presumes we even have an immediate result; don't forget 2000, when America had to wait more than a month.

Yet there is, in the national conversation, surprisingly little talk about not accepting the winner if things don't go your way. Sure, some Democrats joke about moving to Canada, but gauging the severity of responses on the day after is a gauzy exercise in tarot-card reading that even television's loudest mouths rarely discuss.

While the spectrum of possible morning-after reactions runs from water-cooler grousing to partisan lawyering to violence, the depth of sentiment this year - more impassioned, many say, than even the last two elections - could make for a bumpy ride, particularly if the results are close.

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Only 28% of the Kool-aid drinkers and Republican neo-con, bush loyalists will be happy.

Remember that half of eligible voters do not cast ballots!

It claimed that the "eligible voter" pool is based on the voting age population of citizens, permanent residents, etc., whether they're eligible to vote or not. The implication is that the percentage of people who are actual eligible voters may be considerably higher, depending on the number of non-citizens counted in the census.

Voter turnout is still appalling, but that implies the turnout might be closer to sixty or seventy percent instead of fifty or so. I don't know the number of citizens versus counted noncitizens though.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Like I said, I came across the mention just a few hours ago and am bereft of clue on it.

The youngsters don't remember, but there actually was a time, when once the election was over, people went back to doing their own thing, congratulated(even if grudgingly) the winners, and accepted the fact that their guy had not won.

Acrimony went away, and the "new guy" was given a honeymoon period..

The one difference was this..

Our NEWS people back then actually reported NEWS...not slander, opinion & vitriol. We did not have HannityLimbaughO'ReillyBoortzSavageBeckBechananCarlson-etc in our faces and in our ears 24/7, stirring up shit..

When we picked up a paper, it was full of the actual news..even stuff that didn't happen in the USA.. When we turned on a radio ,we got music.. TV was for sitcoms, dramas & variety shows, and the loacl & national news..real news, sans spin.
TV ads were from Kelloggs, Ipana, & Mr Clean..not from Boeing, BP, the Royals of Saudi Arabia..

Gas companies advertised to get us to put a Tiger in our tank...not to tell us how much they really loved us all and how they had only our best interests at heart..

Excedrin wanted us to stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer..and to get rid of headache # 87..and their pill could help..today's meds play caliope carnival music to hide the part about how we trade sneezing hay fever for lymphoma or explosive diarrhea..

and even worse losers. It'll be banshee wailing for months. People who think this ends if Obama gets in are wrong. That is just phase one. They will undermine everything he will try to do, that's why the Congress is just as important as the White House.