Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I should be happy...

As a lifelong Democrat supporter, I should be ecstatic about the key wins for the party. I should be happy that our governor has been re-elected, the senate race was won by a Democrat, and other key races were won by Democrats. So why am I so sad? I suspect two reasons:
  1. The two-party system seems to have melted into a choice for the better of two evils. I suspect Republicans feel the same way about their party's nominees. I have reservations about the Democrat winner, and I did consider voting Independent, but I didn't want it to be a "wasted-vote".

  2. The referendum results astounded, shocked and dismayed me, not just here in NE Wi, but elsewhere. I'm thrilled that abortion rights were upheld, stem-cell research was legalized and that minimum wages were raised in a few states.

    YEAH!

    However, it saddened me that 7 out of 8 states banned same-sex marriage and referendi (I think that's the proper Latin plural) to legalize or allow medical marijuana were rejected.

    Wow.

    I'm astounded that people are so afraid of people different than themselves and so utterly ignorant of the real reasons why these bills should have been defeated.

    I blame it on the insurance and the drug industry and no doubt suspect much money was spent by these companies on making sure same-sex couples (as well as opposite-sex unmarried couples) did not receive benefits. And my take on marijuana is this: for many people who are able to or medically need to, ingesting marijuana in moderation shouldn't be a crime. It's been proven to alleviate pain and nausea. I'd rather do that than finding out the side-effects of pain-medication or anti-nausea medication.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

New York's system, where you can vote for the mainstream candidate on the independent party endorsement, means I got to vote for Clinton while having my vote count for the Working Families party. No 'election spoiling'. It's pretty cool.

KarenE said...

I love it! I wish that way of voting were not an exception....