I don't wager upon politics or sporting events, but I'll offer my hope that Obama manages to prevail solely based upon one factor, and only one.
It's the Supreme Court...stupid.
The economy will recover no matter whom is elected. Slowly, but under either administration its virtually inevitable, by purpose or accident.
However, as a middle-age white guy liberal that voted for Obama last time around, I am most concerned about the direction and preservation of individual civil liberties... and not just my own, but for those that will continue on long after I'm gone.
Only the President retains the privilege of nominating justices to the Supreme Court. Sad to say, our justices are more evidently politically partisan than any other time in my life span to date. Many 5/4 cases/rulings can be cited of recent memory, but the current "conservative" court has personified the very embodiment of indifference to either defending a representative democracy or individual civil liberties.
The current court handed down, arguably, one of the worst decisions in the last century by codifying the notion that "corporations are people" and money (MONEY!) is the very same thing as "speech".
Even one more appointed "conservative judge" could very well set back any righted social injustices or currently enjoyed protections and freedoms by 50 to 100 years.
Roe v Wade - *poof*
Voters Rights Act - *poof*
Civil Rights Act - *poof*
Labor laws, environmental laws, civil protection laws, privacy laws, immigration laws, voter laws, gun laws, workplace equality laws, banking laws...
This is no slippery-slope fallacy argument.
All would be challenged by those on the radical right as "unconstitutional" in one fashion or another. Trust me, many or most are already in suit on some local, state, or even federal level. And a sympathetic "conservative" court could very well alter or eliminate 75 years of social progress and justice in one year or two, with ugly repercussions spanning decades.
I know elections are theoretically driven by the electorates wallets
and how people perceive their own well-being economically. But I can only hope that someone will remind those same voters that elections do indeed have consequences
and that some things are more valuable than a new TV or anything of tomorrows one-time estimable intrinsic value.
The next time you witness, or fall victim to some injustice of society or governmental imposition, and you shout aloud Somebody needs to do something about this
!
That somebody is you, at the ballot box.
Elections really do have consequences
and Im voting for the guy that has a post-graduate degree and was a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, not the guy that was not, is not, and will never be anything more than a defender of really rich people
