CHANGE WON OVER NEGATIVITY

Since this is a St. Maarten blog, these comments will be based on what I feel St. Maarten has felt looking at this election. It could be that because of the length of this campaign, we paid more attention to it than any other in the past but it is more likely the fact that Barack Obama was black or more accurate, of mixed race.

Now we all know that for a black man to win, he had to run a campaign that was much better than that of his opponent and the Democratic campaign was simply better. Obama and the Democrats was able to bring a message of hope and change to the masses and win over 2/3 of the young vote. A young vote that is more progressive when it comes to race relations.

To win, not only did the young vote have to vote Democratic but Obama had to convince a significant percentage of white men and white women not classified as young and although McCain and the Republicans won those two demographics, Obama made inroads enough to be elected the 44^th President of the United States of America. To me this proves that in the US, the pocket book is more important than race.

Another aspect of the election that experts are saying pushed more voters towards the Democrats was the negative tone of the campaign from the red side. This is not to say that there weren’t any Democratic attack ads but these were combined with positive ads while the perception (and we know that perception is reality in politics) was that McCain was almost exclusively negative.

A few weeks ago I wrote a series of 4 articles comparing our local DP Government to Republicans in the US. I argued that their campaign and governing style leaned to the right (Conservative) while the campaign and governing (if we ever get the chance) of the NA would lean to the left. It bears to see with the economic turmoil on the island, if the residents here would also vote for change.

Now naturally, there are several other issues that play a major role in our elections (read money) but I have to admit that in the last election that gap was closed by the NA. What also surprises me is the amount of hardcore DP supporters that supported Barack was evident, I was at a Election party last night and in attendance was Theo Heyliger. I argue that Democratic philosophies are not in line with how DP governs but he of course disagreed.

As luck would have it, I heard radio and technology personality Greg Richardson talk about a website where you can answer a few questions and based on your answer the website will reveal to you your political philosophy. Hopefully Greg will read this and add the link in a comment.

Well the Election is over;
a black man is the President of the United States!!! I never thought I would live to say or type that.