Kyle Bell

It’s been a while since I made a post on here. Several months in fact. Since the last time I posted Barack Obama has been sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (now former governor) was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat and then was impeached for it (but not before appointing Roland Burris to fill the seat), several of Obama’s cabinet appointments have withdrawn due to tax issues, and Hillary Clinton was sworn in as Secretary of State. Quite a lot of news in just a few short months. Let’s break it down and I’ll give my reactions.

The Post-Election Period

Now that all of the votes have been officially counted, it turns out that Obama won by nearly 10 million votes and 7 percent. This is significantly up from where it was on election not and compares favorably to most elections in recent past. President Obama is actually the first Democrat since 1976 to win a majority of the popular vote. His margin of victory in votes compares to Bush’s 3 million vote margin in 2004 and Bill Clinton’s impressive 8 million vote margin in 1996. You actually have to go back to 1984′s victory by Ronald Reagan where a candidate won by a larger margin (in numbers, not percents).

I might also add that I predicted way back in June that Indiana was a competitive state that Obama might win. He did end up winning it, as well as Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa and Ohio. The states I missed were Florida (Obama won it) and Missouri, which was within a few thousand votes of being an Obama state. Although I said that Indiana was a true toss-up state, I put it in the McCain column at the time. So way back in June 2008 I correctly predicted every state except three. That’s pretty darn good when you compare it to the likes of the so-called “professionals” on television.