It is done-we have a new president

We now have a president who can speak English. We now have a president without a southern accent (for a change). While it's true that I could have hoped for a more liberal president, I'm not going to judge the man yet--he starts work tomorrow. Quite apart from what Barack Obama may or may not do, I'm proud of my country for electing a black man to be our president. Or, to put it another way, for having elected this man in spite of the fact that he's not white.

Maybe one of these days even a woman can be president*

But what I'm thinking about this evening is not Barack Obama or Joe Biden. I called home to talk to my parents and I was talking to my dad, who's lately taken over running a soup kitchen. He got to talking with one of the women who come to distribute coats at the soup kitchen (I'd provide a link for the organization that does this but I can't find one). This woman had done a good deal of good things-she'd gone into Manhattan and taken homeless people to where they could get food and medical attention and (as mentioned above) she was part of a program to distribute coats to those that need them.

My dad and this woman talked a bit about the election and she mentioned that she had voted for John McCain because she was an evangelical christian. That made me think a bit (or rather it brought up something that I've been thinking about for a while). There are many very good people who are in fact (if they only knew it) for many of the things that us liberals want-helping the poor for example-but they will not vote for a man or a woman that is pro choice or pro evolution. I could get on my high horse and say that they should all leave God out of the voting booth and concentrate on reality, but I would be hypocritical to do so. It would be very hard for me to vote for a candidate that was anti-choice, or had murky views on evolution (and therefore science in general). These are things that are as important to me as they are to these good people (some of whom I am related to).

So what are we to do? My dad listened to what the very nice woman who voted for McCain had to say and said "well perhaps you'll think differently in 6 months."

I hope so. I hope they all do.




*I'm not a PUMA. I didn't particularly like Hillary Clinton for president, because she's too much of a Republicrat, and that in the end was more important than getting a woman in the white house to me.