My 2nd biggest problem with tonight's elections

My first is obvious.  I'm a raging liberal.  Raging.  I am half donkey.  Take a blood sample if you wish; I don't lie.  So the results thus far in the Virginia Governor’s race (VAGov), New Jersey Governor’s race (NJGov) and likely the upcoming results in New York’s 23^rd Congressional District (NY23), are to my displeasure as a Democrat. 

As of posting time, calls had been made for the GOP in NJGov, and, even worse for the people of the commonwealth, VAGov.  In the former, Republican Chris Christie bested incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine.  In the latter, ultra-conservative Bob McDonnell took an easy victory home over Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds.

Outside of Mark Kirk, the representative from suburban Chicago that will most likely be the GOP nominee for the Illinois Senate seat my ultimate boss, current state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, seeks, McDonnell is now public enemy number one, as far as I’m concerned.

Although McDonnell says his views since writing it have changed, a thesis paper he wrote when 34 years old should give the nation pause as to where it is headed.  McDonnell’s thesis on feminism and family values essentially says that working women are a detriment to society and functional families, and that “homosexuals” are the main problem in America today.  Is this really who you want, Virginia? 

The bigger issue in terms of this blog, though, is the problem I have with so many people calling tonight’s results a referendum on President Obama.  Let’s break this down.  A historically red state with an unprecedented track record of electing a governor from the opposite party as the president (true since 1977) elects a GOP candidate against an extremely weak blue candidate with a Democrat in the Oval Office, and somehow, tonight’s vote somehow represents how they feel about Obama?

Aside from the fact that Deeds was, for all intents and purposes, a weak candidate, Obama’s approval rating in Virginia is still above 50 percent, and 56 percent of voters said their feelings on Obama had nothing to do with their vote today.  And of the voters who told exit pollsters that their Obama feelings influenced their vote, only 24 percent said that negative feelings toward Obama influenced them.

The same holds true for New Jerseyans.  Let alone Corzine’s approval rating treacherously in the 40s, New Jersey’s dead-last rank in economic development among states, and Corzine being an extremely wealthy former Goldman-Sachs executive; exit polls asking the same question to voters in NJGov showed that 60 percent said Obama had no impact on their vote, and of the 39 percent who said their Obama feelings did influence their votes, 20 percent voted to show support for Obama.

NY23 is perhaps the most interesting of the races with candidates tonight.  Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, for weeks the odds-on favorite to win the upstate district that hasn’t gone blue since the Civil War, trails narrowly the Democrat Bill Owens after GOP candidate Dede Scozzofava dropped out of the race over the weekend.  If the Republicans/conservatives can’t even hold a district which they haven’t lost since the 1860s, let alone win by a substantial margin, how is this a referendum on Obama?

And with all of these ultra-right conservatives becoming the “revolution” of the Republican Party, how can the GOP have room for moderates and win any elections except those in districts like NY23?

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, it looks like they might not even do that.

Suck it, Michael Steele.

College

Today I am thinking about college. Specifically, my college experience. It has definitely been unique.

In general, the word "college" makes me think of both ultra-intelligent, preppy people you'd find studying in a library in a big group- the kind of people universities like to put on brochures- and also the more social, sometimes slightly more unkempt people who spend more time drinking and partying than devoting time to class and studying. I have been to two universities in my college career and the first was full of the first people I described, while the second has many more of the second group. I transferred after one year for several reasons, the main one being that I thought I would fit in better, from the University of Illinois to Western Illinois University.

Now, the unfortunate thing is that I have discovered through all of this that I am really more of that first group. At least, I come to college to learn and get a degree rather than party all the time. I don't know so much about the ultra-intelligent part. I am not an extremely outgoing person and I have a hard time starting up a conversation with people I don't know. I don't like to go to big parties and drink all night. I don't have a problem with alcohol, but I don't see the point in drinking just to get drunk. It is expensive and you are sure to feel horrible the next day. These viewpoints make me a pretty big minority here at Western. They also make it pretty hard for me to find friends with similar interests. Though my roommates are not as extreme as the Western stereotype I painted above, they do have much more in common with each other than with me and have become best friends during this semester. They both are much more social than I and have many mutual friends that they hang out with all the time. This makes me often the third wheel. If I am invited to come along wherever they are going, I'm still left to my own devices once we get there, which basically means I stand alone awkwardly, since I don't know anyone. They also don't understand that I don't enjoy all the same things that they do, and therefore I am often just left out or ignored.

I realize this makes me sound pretty pathetic. I do have friends, but the majority of them don't go here. It just makes me wonder if I made the right decision back in the first semester of my freshman year. I honestly didn't give U of I much of a chance. I had applied to transfer by Christmas. Maybe I should have listened to Kelly, my first friend at U of I, one my best friends now, and my would-have-been roommate for sophomore year, when she told me to stay. I'm not saying I regret the decision to transfer, but I am not positive I did the right thing either. There are benefits to being at Western. I am much closer to both home and Colin and since the school is much smaller, I have gotten to know both professors and students in my major. But the part that bothers me is that I transferred to fit in better and ended up realizing I fit better at U of I. How ironic.