Steven Ivory: Barack Obama is a Two-Term President

Barack Obama is now what Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged he wouldn’t be: a two-term President.

Yes, I did it:  I claimed the election on behalf of Obama early. I wrote this  Monday, November 5th 2012.  The EUR posted it Tuesday, November 6th, before noon pacific standard time, long before  national voting polls closed.  In other words, in writing this, I stepped out on sheer and utter faith.

I was just ready to be done with  this exasperating election.  Every day of the campaign brought the possibility of yet another  game-changing  event. The debates, the super pac TV ads, the incessant news coverage and my voracious appetite for  it–all of it  stressed me out.

So I chose not to wait.  Monday morning, I turned off the “Today Show” and with the unsettled, excited  optimism of a man gingerly venturing onto a freshly frozen lake, I declared Obama triumphant.

My decision wasn’t based on  media polls,  scientific data or the number of Obama Halloween masks sold this year.

Instead, I put my confidence in the American people. I bet that the surreal, dysfunctional times in which we live are still ruled by sagacity and logic and reason.

I held out hope that there were enough Americans who hadn’t lost their minds or bought the okie-doke, who were determined to have their voices heard, not through bitter, angry shouting (although we all did plenty of that),  but with their vote.  I put my faith in the people, and the people didn’t let me down.

What an election. Obama did battle with an opponent who will say almost anything for a vote;  with a terrorist attack on an American embassy, and with an east coast hurricane.

Moreover, he fought back a GOP so archaic, so desperately and irrevocably blinkered that it has all but rendered itself extinct. The party’s despicable behavior is enough to make you think  certain attitudes and beliefs haven’t changed all that much in this country after all.

But they have. In 2007, when Obama  announced his candidacy for President, you could not have hypnotized me into believing that in my lifetime a black man could hold the highest office in the land, or that one of  his most formidable opponents for the job would be a woman (Hillary Clinton).

And now that man has just been reelected President of the United States. I am encouraged.