Forgive me, Bobo, but I do not believe in Bigfoot. Nevertheless, it was a delight spending a Saturday afternoon with you -- the sasquatch hunter from Animal Planet's "Finding Bigfoot" -- in, of all places, a midtown Manhattan bar. Most pleasant was your welcoming embrace of one rejecting the existence of the apelike hominid you say inhabits the forests of North America.
The Republican Party has won a majority of the popular vote just once in the last six elections. That dismal track record followed a party revival in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan led the GOP to three straight popular vote majorities.
Hearing so much chatter about "change" in the Republican Party, the innocent voter might believe that the Republicans had learned important lessons from their stinging electoral defeat. On closer examination, however, the likelihood of real change appears nil because the party's leaders and thinkers can cite so many excuses to remain utterly the same.
A funny thing happened as I was looking at the political map of this year's presidential election: It began to look like the map of the presidential election of 2004.
Yikes, we're headed toward a fiscal cliff! It will crush the economy! Or so the media and politicians tell us.
One of the more curious "gifts" in Mitt Romney's list of ways Barack Obama allegedly bought off voters was letting young people up to the age of 26 stay on their parents' health plan. It was a gift, all right, a gift to America.
Trying to explain away his decisive, sweeping and very expensive rout to his disappointed supporters -- those one-percent Republicans -- Mitt Romney offered a new version of the discredited "47 percent" argument that was so ruinous in its original form. In a Wednesday afternoon conference call, the defeated Republican nominee told donors and fundraisers that President Obama had won by lavishing generous "gifts" upon certain groups, including young voters, African-Americans and Latinos.
More than 40 years ago, the federal government launched a war on drugs. Over the past decade, the nation has spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting that war, a figure that does not even include the high costs of prosecuting and jailing drug law offenders. It's hard to put a price on that aspect of the drug war since half of all inmates in federal prison today were busted for drugs.
Barack Obama attended more than 200 fundraisers for his presidential campaign, but he refrained from raising money for congressional Democrats.
The tea party now has its own news site. Based at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, the Tea Party News Network describes itself as "the only trusted news source." It focuses on such right-wing heroes as Michele Bachmann and Allen West, who just lost an election for a House seat in South Florida -- though perhaps not on TPNN.
Democrats won big last week. So government will continue to grow. Individual freedom will yield.
At least some people with records of supporting liberty were elected: Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona and U.S. Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio in Michigan and Thomas Massie in Kentucky.
Also, Washington and Colorado voted to allow any adult to use marijuana. (But users beware. Your newfound freedom may be short-lived thanks to that extraordinary human being in the White House -- you know, the one who smoked pot when he was in school. Despite promising that he wouldn't, he has cracked down on pot dispensaries far more often than President Bush did.)
Here's a question from a recent national exit poll: "Which is closer to your view? Government should do more. (Or) government is doing too much." More voters said "too much" than said "not enough." Political analysts picked up that response and ran with it for days.
Lukewarm. That's the feeling I get from the election numbers.
Turnout was apparently down, at least as a percentage of eligible voters. The president was re-elected by a reduced margin. The challenger didn't inspire the turnout surge he needed.
One of the strangest aspects of Election 2012 is that voters are demanding change but didn't change politicians. They left Republicans in charge of the House, elected an even more Democratic Senate and re-elected President Obama. They're unhappy with the status quo in the country but left the political status quo in place.
Americans wanted to keep the country they know, and said so Tuesday. Now it's time for responsible Republicans to take their party back from the fringe that loses them elections.
What Barack Obama tried to tell America in the hour of his remarkable victory is that the nation's future won on Election Day. Seeking to inspire and to heal, the reelected president offered an open hand to partisan opponents in the style that has always defined him.
I expect that by the time you read this, President Obama will have been re-elected. Get ready for four more years of Big Bloated Government.
You know who won the election (or whether we face another Florida 2000), and as I write I don't.
My favorite Frankenstorm quote comes from Ralph Lopez, interviewed outside a housing project in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. "Half the world doesn't have electricity," the 73-year-old said, walking his Chihuahua, Pepe. "I grew up in a cold-water flat with no heat at all. And this is just for a week. So, boohoo."
Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents, and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.
