What I'm taking away from the election.

After taking some time to watch the tallies trickle in, I think it's time to talk about what we (or I) learned from this election.

The most obvious post-election revelation is that the republican party needs a facelift, and a new numbers guy. I know people want to point fingers at Christie or Sandy for Mitt's loss, but here are a few more logical places your fingers can point. The first is that the Grand Ol' Party is clearly getting pretty old. This IS your grandfather's political party. Socially conservative views don't hold the same water they did way back when, and while it seems fair to have a party that's right of center, I think the republicans are getting a little right of right. I'm not just talking about being pro-life, because I think a lot of people could and would vote for the republican ticket while they are pro-life. I'm talking about being so "pro-life" that they want to define rape, ban contraceptives and defund planned parenthood. I'm talking about a party that falls so far to the right on marriage equality they feel the need to BAN it, even though it's not allowed in the first place. One pundit said it best last night when he said, "for young people being gay is like being left-handed, it's boring."  That's true, and if the GOP wants to win the young vote, they need to come around to the issues and beliefs of the majority of young people.
Which brings me to my second point, the GOP really needs a new numbers guy. Romney was counting on three key demographics to pull him through: white, male, christian. That's fine, the christian white male deserves a party that he agrees with, but he is not the majority anymore. That's the thing, Romney won the white vote. But he didn't win the election because Obama won all the other demographics. Obama's numbers guy realized that if they could get ALL the non-white folks to vote for Obama that's more than all the white folks. It's all a numbers game right? The democrats played the numbers really well, the GOP did not so much.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are witnessing history in the fall of the republican party. Political parties have an ebb and flow to them, and most politcal parties change, adapt, or disppear over time. For example, Lincoln was a republican and while yes current republicans are anti-slavery, the current republican party looks nothing like the republican party that Lincoln witnessed. Neither does the current Democratic party look like the Democratic party of Lincoln's time. This isn't something that will happen overnight, tomorrow the Republican party will look the same. But as top Republican's are beginning to call for a third party, are endorsing Obama, or are leaving the Republican party to be indepentents, it is clear there is a large swath of people who might start a third party.
The new third party will probably still be a conservative one. Fiscally speaking they will for sure be conservative.  But I think the general compassion that seems to be missing in the Republican party today will show up in a new third party. They will likely be socially moderate, though right-leaning. This will give a place to land for all the people that might be pro-life, but don't identify at all with people like Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh.  People that might have their beliefs about traditional marriage, but see no need to attack gay people and call them names. It's not that I think a conservative viewpoint is so out of date it will go away forever, but the people I know that voted Republican this time around are exponentially more compassionate than the current Republican platform. (do we need a third party, or is everyone just gonna be independent  That's another question for another time).

I also learned that what that pundit said about young people is true. The first openly gay senator was elected and....silence. Nobody cares. So what?  We have a black president, a gay senator, marriage equality in 3 new states, and the defeat of some extreme senators. This is an incredible step forward. Did this happen because people changed their minds? Maybe a little bit, but young people turned out to vote overwhelmingly. And young people, as I've mentioned before about my generation, are really different from previous generations.
I would say that young vote is to absolutely to blame for those outcomes. If it wasn't why did pot get legalized in two states? It feels like young people thought, "meh, people can do what they want. Shouldn't we fix the economy?" Which is pretty much a solid thought process. I would suspect the generation of voters after me, and even the first time voters this election who are way younger than me, are not going to move the needle in the other direction.  If you think it's good or bad, it's 100% true that young people are socially liberal. (back to the rep party...if they want the young vote, they should figure this out)

So yeah, nothing is perfect and after a divisive campaign season we ended up exactly where we started. With gridlock in congress, a "fiscal cliff" upcoming, and two parties that have to figure out how to work together or crash the economy again.  But we also saw forward movement, and maybe the Republicans will work with the Democrats and the President after the people voted for them again.