Obama is now president-elect. He gave a beautiful victory speech in Chicago, full of calls for unity, vision, one nation, a beautiful future, G-d bless, and so forth. 338 electoral votes to 157; 51% of the vote to 47%.
McCain gave a simple and noble concession speech.
The Democrats are gaining in the Senate and House, though they have not secured a filibuster-proof majority of 61 in the former.
I hope that Obama will be the entire country's president, and not only the Democrats'. That he will reach across the aisle. His victory speech suggests he will. His record and history do not.
I wonder if he has a core. Noone seems to know what he stands for--his former colleagues on Harvard Law Review among them. Is he in Bill Ayers' pocket? Rashid Khalidi's? Reverend Wright's? David Axelrod's? His own? My wonderings are what undergird my deep anxieties, expressed earlier, about the unfolding of a very liberal Democratic agenda--a big spending, big taxes, anti-personal-intiative agenda.
At least one national Republican figure has suggested a self-willed banishment to the wilderness for his party (in other words, a time of retreat and regrouping). As reported in The Wall Street Journal tonight:
"We've lost our credibility," said Scott Klug, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin who said he fears the party is entering a long period of retrenchment. "We're just going to be in the wilderness for a while."
What aspect of its core will emerge to engage the 4% and more who could have put McCain into the White House? I feel a desire to go into the wilderness as well. How the country changes! How quickly it seems to be sacrificing tradition, loyalty, family, community, and even G-d for individualism and the dream of salvation-in-government.
Over the last few days I have been preoccupied with the impending results of this day. A weight has been lifted and we shall see what the morrow brings. One must of course not despair.
-- H. A. Massig
