Post Election Thoughts

It's taken me this long after the election to get onto our home computer, between the "bogarting" of it by the teen age moralist and the sainted spouse and the pre teen cat whisperer. Maybe it's time for us to get more than one of the "infernal machines"? Incidentally, do I show my age by using the term "bogart" to mean monopolization? Guess I listened too much to my "Easy Rider" soundtrack album back in my youth.

I was happily surprised by the Democratic pick up of both Houses of Congress Tuesday. As I wrote right before the election I was pessimistic about us picking up the Senate and also about the chances of some statewide Democratic incumbents in Georgia. Thankfully Thurbert Baker and Michael Thurmond were both re-elected, although Thurmond's race was much closer than it should have been. As I've often said and wrote, Michael Thurmond has done an excellent job of running the Georgia Department of Labor, and for him win by anything less than a landslide speaks ill of Georgia voters. Instead of 54 plus percent he should have won with 60 or 65 percent. Still, I was quite happy to see this deserving intellectual leader returned to office for 4 more years. In Thurbert Baker's case, he won with 57 percent of the vote. One interesting fact I noted about Baker's re-election was that he had a majority in most of Georgia's counties. The fact that my home Coweta county gave 57 percent of it's vote to Baker's opponent told me all I need to know about how Republican and "red" Coweta county is at this point in it's history. Hopefully that will change over time. It seems kind of sad that the birth place of one of Georgia's most progressive Democratic Governors would be so conservatively Republican. I'm speaking of Ellis Arnold of course, who as Governor from 1943-1947 was far ahead of his time. Of course Arnold's reward for being so progressive and liberal was that he was never again to win an election in a long lifetime after 1947. Sometimes I despair of my home state and it's politics. Stil in all, a good night to be a Democrat nationally, and a better night than I had hoped to be a Georgia Democrat, with at least some Dems winning statewide races.