Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Four More Years! Election Results Are (Mostly) In

(via Facebook)
I spent the majority of Monday and Tuesday dodging election information. While at home, for example, I caught up on some shows OnDemand so I didn't have to see the cluster of political ads on the networks and then went out to hang out with Darren and caught the Diamond Rings show at Soda Bar. Tuesday was an all-errand/no-TV day until I finally let myself pay close attention to social media as polls closed on the east coast (which is still better than watching cable news). It was a great moment, as Emily Wells performed at Luce Loft. She was dedicating a song to Obama and said she hoped for good news when I told her that the election had been called in favor of Obama mid-set. Barack Obama tweeted the photo seen here with "Four More Years" which quickly became the most retweeted tweet in history. She rejoiced, the crowd clapped, and the show's mood definitely lightened up.

Once the presidential election was called, I was happy to follow along with our local races and state propositions. I'm not going to go through everything, but am happy to say that it looks like some important things happened here. Bob Filner appears to be beating Carl DeMaio for mayor, Prop 30 passed which is a win for education, and it appears that Scott Peters defeated Brian Billbray, which is awesome even though I'm not in their district. Unfortunately, some things will never change, as evidenced by Districts 49 & 50 (where Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter held their Congressional seats, respectively). Still, we can be happy that nationally there were big wins for gay marriage, marijuana, and women.

Obviously there are better places than this site to see results and what they mean to all of us, so check out KPBS Election Results to check on all the races and in case you missed Obama's victory speech, you can see/read it all here.

I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. 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.

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