It’s over. It’s all over. Campaign 2012 is officially in the books, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
I have an idea-let’s recap the last 11 months of pure, blissful and unadulterated entertainment that was the 2012 Presidential Election.
To make life easier, we will start in January of this year, when the Republicans took to the task of selecting their nominee. Oh what a glorious cast they had. I remember it like it was yesterday. Michelle Bachmann, my all-time favorite, wowed audiences with her knack for just making stuff up. The Associated Press had to place a quota on how many of Bachmann’s statements it would fact check during the primary debates. It got to the point where she was just wasting everybody’s time.
Who else? We had pizza guy Herman Cain, gaffe machine Rick Perry, ever-faithful Newt Gingrich and yes, ultimately, Willard Romney. Let me just say, I am going to miss Mitt. That hair was flat out perfect and the 47 percent comment was one for the ages. All jokes aside, I commend Governor Romney for the classy and gracious concession speech he made Tuesday night.
And who did Mitt concede to? Yes, you nailed it-Barack “2 TERMZ” Obama. President Obama wasn’t immune to gaffes and fumbles during the campaign season. He gave Republicans everywhere a rallying cry with the whole “You didn’t build that” fiasco. Then, at the first presidential debate, he took a nice nap.
No disrespect to the president, you know I love him, but it wasn’t an easy ride to secure his second term. Romney gave him a run for his money.
Let us not forget U.S. Senate candidates and women’s health experts Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, whose controversial comments on rape sealed their political fate. This year’s election shows that if you say barbaric and asinine things about rape, you are probably going to lose.
Speaking of people I hope I don’t hear from again, Donald Trump made headlines this election season. He excited the masses when he said he had a bombshell claim about President Obama that would change the election. It turned out to be a YouTube video of the Donald demanding Obama to release his college records and passport applications. If Obama did so by a certain deadline, Trump would donate $5 million to charity. An idea for Donald: donate the $5 million to charity, delete your Twitter account and have Mitt Romney as one of your participants on the next “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Tuesday night, to be honest, was a shock to me, not because of who won but how quickly it was over. If you read my column last week, you would know that I made the case for the re-election of Barack Obama. But I did expect the election to drag on late and be a lot closer than the outcome was. That being said, I was reluctant to make a prediction to “The Ramapo News” editor-in-chief, Nicole Alliegro, who was fretting whether results would be in by the time of publication. Well, calm down Nicole, the results were in sooner than I thought.
As soon as 11:15 p.m. rolled around, we knew that President Obama would be re-elected for a second term. He nearly swept the swing states and coasted to victory with more than 300 electoral votes. It was all over way too quickly for me, but the question that still looms is, “Now what?”
Well, as I wrote last week, we move forward. President Obama is our guy for the next four years. The key word there is “our.” Not just mine, not just liberals’, not just Democrats’. He is the President of the entire United States of America, and the beautiful thing about an election is that it gives us Americans the chance to come together and rally behind our leaders, regardless of party affiliation. It is my hope that we are able to do so these next four years and beyond.
As President Obama said in his acceptance speech just after 2 a.m. yesterday, “We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.”
