Election results - try to keep some perspective

I posted this to a forum discussion and thought it was worth reposting here:

I'm not an Obama supporter (I voted for Bob Barr) but there's no need for hysteria. This country's had lousy presidents before and survived. I would include the current occupant of the oval office in the lousy category even though I voted for him in 2000; at this point no one I know, including many die-hard Republicans think he did a good job. OTOH, the hysterical rants from the left about him being a Nazi, etc. seem silly to anyone not caught up in the hype.

Similarly, that one who won the election tonight is not a Communist. A Socialist maybe, but any socialist agenda he tries to implement will cause a backlash. Then there will be a major Republican sweep of Congress in 2010. And we can once again rejoice in having divided government. That is the best option we'll have until the two-party duopoly is broken.

Election ... zzzzzzzz

OK, since this blog is mainly about politics I guess I should make a commentary about this election before it's over. I said before that I was leaning toward writing in Ron Paul, but that was before he gave his endorsement to a member of the Christian Taliban. I also briefly gave very slight consideration McCain after he picked Palin as his VP, on rumors that she leaned libertarian, but I have since come to see her as just another cookie cutter Republican, and one who answers questions with even less substance than a Washington insider (something I didn't think possible before).

So of the douches and turds still left in the presidential election, it looks as if the least unappealing is Bob Barr. A phony libertarian to be sure, one the Libertarian Party helped defeat in his last senate race because of his excessive Drug War zealotry, he is nonetheless saying all the right things in this race as the LP candidate. Does he believe what he says? Probably not and that would be a problem if he actually had a chance of winning and of governing on an agenda very different from that which he campaigned on. But it is obvious that White House will go to one of the candidates of the two wings of the Ever-Expanding Big Government party, and the best freedom-loving voters can do this year (on the presidential level at least) is send a message. A vote for Barr, of all the candidates running, would send the best message. There are no doubt many good write-in possibilities but none of these is likely to get a large enough block of votes to get any attention. Barr, on the other hand could get a percentage that would tip the balance in some closely contested states. Even where it is not close, like my own home state of Pennsylvania, 2 or 3% of the vote could be enough to give the major parties something to think about, in 2012 especially if the race is tight then. Whether this would move the major parties to do more than give lip service to reducing spending or restoring civil liberties is uncertain, but it is the best chance we have of moving them in that direction. And it is the best chance we have of possibly in the distant future electing a real libertarian president (LP or otherwise).