November 4, 2008 to November 5, 2009.  Coming home after dinner at my father’s house on Election Night last year, I played the choral movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony loud.   I didn’t stop playing it in the car until sometime in late December, I believe.

 I don’t think either party should break out either the champagne or the arsenic over this past Tuesday’s results; it was a very off-year minor election, hardly denting the results of 2008, although I’m deeply disappointed in Maine’s repeal  of same-sex marriage.  I’m thankful Hoffman lost in New York, and I laugh that a district  long represented by a Republican went to a Democrat and gave Sarah Palin a political black eye at the same moment.    I just  doubt it’s going to have a wide-spread effect on the rest of the country.  I’m definitely concerned about the Congressional mid term elections next year, but I’m not running around with my hair on fire screaming that “this is the beginning of the end!” either.

A few days after the election last year, my mother and I were talking about the victory, and noted how somber Obama’s victory speech had been. 

            “I know we’ve got a lot of problems, but I would have liked a little more jubilation and triumph and some more cheering and balloons,” I grumbled.

I’d spent the previous eight years feeling as if no matter how low my estimation of the Bush administration sank, they would always find a way to tunnel under it. Above all, I was afraid that the Bush-Cheney crowd would do the last worst thing, and refuse to leave office. I didn’t truly breathe easy on that account until I saw Cheney rolled away in his wheel chair and the helicopter taking the Bush family off to Texas on January 20^th.

Even in the midst of my fierce joy at seeing those sorry bastards finally out of power, I was still anxious and uncertain about the country.  Obama's Inaugural Address was likewise  filled with a call to stand up, to volunteer, to work and be adults in order to face and solve our troubles. And they are numerous, many of them made worse by years of neglect and denial. I don’t know how the president even gets out of bed each morning when he has so much weight pressing on him.  On one hand he has so many people feeling  he’s not doing enough fast enough, and the other, people who are  trying to slow him down and trip him up however they can. The big message I took away from Obama on Inauguration Day was “I can’t do this alone.”

2009  has been a rough, ugly year.  No country just bounces back from the kind of financial meltdown we saw begin last fall.  It has most definitely sucked like a Hoover for every person who has lost their savings, their jobs, their homes and their health, and sometimes all of the above and for their families.  My sympathy is definitely with our soldiers who have seen far too much bloody violence on the other side of the world and far too little of their homes and families since 2003.  I’m not envisioning any bed of roses for 2010, either.  

 I didn’t vote for Obama in the belief that everything that was wrong would magically be fixed when he took that oath of office.  I voted him because I felt he was the person who might have the best clue on how to get us OUT of the woods. The Red Team was unendurable. It took decades for things to get this bad, the last eight years of which were only the most blatantly up-fucked. 

            I haven’t agreed with or approved of everything Obama has done in office, by a long shot.  I wrote him a letter this summer urging him to stop worrying so much about being so blinking  bipartisan. Bipartisanship is a noble goal and one worth striving for, but it only works to our benefit when BOTH parties are negotiating and acting in good faith.  Good faith is one thing I’ve seen in very scant supply from the GOP this year.  They’ve been vocal about their wish to see Obama fail, even if it brings down the country, too. Weren’t these the same people who insisted you weren’t a “Real Patriot” or a “Real American” unless you wore a rhinestone flag pin made in China on your lapel as recently as a year or two ago?  Great show of shallow patriotism there, folks.  

            I frequently wish Obama were more forceful, more outspoken in the pursuit of his agenda, which I still feel is the right direction for us to move in. I wish he were more like Alan Grayson. And I wish he could and  would make the GOP fear him in an entirely constructive way, of course. 

     So, even in my case, the honeymoon period is over.

But the marriage is not.  Looking back on last November, if I knew then everything I know now, I would still vote for Obama in a cold minute. Wouldn’t even have to think about it.  If that means my standards are too low or that I’m too willing to be pragmatic, so be it. After listing so far over to starboard for eight years with an arrogant, ignorant and incompetent ship captain, the center  doesn’t look so bad, to me right now. I’ve had it with ‘faith-based’ presidents. I want reality-based, clear-eyed secular leadership thank you very much.

Any day that John McCain is not president, and even more to the point that Sarah Palin  is not the Vice President and has no official policy making decision power that affect me is a good day. No, make that a FREAKING stupendous  good day.  I believe this year would have been shit festival no matter WHO was president. Whenever I feel down on Obama, I take a moment to think of how I would feel with McCain and Palin in charge, right now.  Then I do some deep breathing and thank God with each exhalation that they’re NOT.

For all my frustration with Obama, I’m even more frustrated with the Congressional Democrats.  If the GOP were a ballet company, they’d be the company with the corps de ballet dancing in straight lines and with their arms and legs all moving in unison and in time to the music. The Democrats would be the ballet company that seems to have rehearsed in somebody's garage with different choreography for each person.  With the result that they’re crashing into and tripping over one another, or worse, colliding in mid air. I’m not blown away by either their grace or their effectuality.

The GOP has a  perfectly awful agenda, but dammit, they do have some party discipline and unity in the pursuit of it.   Something the Democrats could stand to harness in a good cause once in a while. I bless Barney Frank and  Alan Grayson, but I wish we had about 300 more Democrats as willing to speak the truth  as courageously and forcefully as they are. As a governing body, Congressional Democrats are far too timid and afraid of upsetting the GOP.

I say “Fuck it, go ahead and upset ‘em ANYWAY! Why the hell should we coddle them? We WON!”

It makes me angry that we must even debate health care; the importance of access to quality health care, preventative care  and controlling the worst abuses of private insurers for all Americans  seems self-evident to me.  I’d like to send Max Baucus back to Montana covered in tar and feathers chased by a big pack of mean dogs.  Doubly so, in Joe Liebermann’s case.

The win is in no way assured, but the broad base of support for it is clear all over the country.   The need didn’t go away after 1994, but no action was taken on it by the GOP.  They had their chance to become the heroes of health care and totally missed the boat.  In twelve years of controlling Congress though during six of which they had a Republican president, the GOP didn’t even TRY to cobble a  health care plan together.

I’m holding Obama to his promise to get us out of Iraq. And to close Gitmo. I haven’t forgotten  at all. I believe we need to get out of both Afghanistan  and Iraq yesterday. I also believe how we get out matters.  Unfortunately, ending wars is a much more difficult and complex process than starting them.  Just as getting a knife out of a stab wound without killing the patient is more complex than shoving it in there in the first place. Obama has to be mindful not only of what might happen right after we leave, but what the situation could be five or ten years down the road. I really can’t curse George Bush often or vehemently enough for staring that stupid war in the first place. 

I want a president who doesn’t try to stifle important scientific and medical research. A president who doesn’t try to deny our environmental problems even exist. I want a president who can speak dignified, grammatically correct English and express his thoughts and complex ideas eloquently.  I want a president who is not both a feared bully and/or  the butt of contemptuous jokes abroad. I desperately want Obama to succeed.  I believe he can and will  although the way is hard. I believe he is still the man I voted for, if rather beset, right now. As I said, it took a long time to screw things up this badly.  I’ll give my president at least a term to try to get things  turned around.  I won’t call his administration misspent or a failure until it’s over.

I'm in it for the long haul.