On Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at about 8pm Pacfic Time, the major news networks officially called the election for the President of the United States of America for Democratic Candidate Barack Obama. But you all already knew that. A lot of people have been expressing excitement over the issue, but to be honest, I'm not one of them. I did not vote for Barack Obama, but neither was I able to bring myself to cast my vote for John McCain.

Don't get me wrong, I respect John McCain as one of this country's greatest public servants. I know some would disagree, but John McCain's devotion to this country and it's people is inspiring. So, why did I not vote for him? Because the last six months have made me wonder if John McCain was his own man anymore. He refused to bring the party away from it's modern message of hate and fear. While he didn't come out himself and try to mark Obama as a Muslim, he did virtually nothing to stop his people (particularly his Vice Presidential Nominee) from making those suggestions. While McCain didn't act poorly himself, he did not, in my opinion, do enough to put a stop to it. In essence, this honorable man, through his own inaction, let his own name get sullied, more so, because it was in the name of an unfair attempt to sully the name of another.

Which brings me to Sarah Palin. When Palin was first announced as the VP Nominee, I was interested. Here was a virtual unknown, from a state that is often poorly represented on the national stage, and it seemed for a moment to be a decision that way like the McCain I respected. It seemed that he did something in spite of the party, intended to shake things up. I was disappointed that the nomination wasn't given to Joe Liberman, or another more moderate candidate, but I knew that the Party would never allow McCain to select a Non-Republican as his running mate.

Then Palin started talking, really falling into her stride. It was clear that she appealed to a large number of people, and energized them for the campaign. Unfortunately, this is exactly why the race became such a blowout. Sarah Palin attracted exactly the kind of people the Republic Party shouldn't be pandering to, but has been anyway. The willfully ignorant. People who revel in Barack Obama being referred to with his middle name, Hussein. People for whom McCain's energy policy boiled down to three words, "Drill Baby, Drill." People who honestly believed, and looked forward to, McCain and Palin attempting to overturn Roe V. Wade.

In other words, people who were never going to vote for Barack Obama. However, this choice as Vice President, and the apparent recklessness with which it was made, drove a lot of middle-ground voters away from McCain. If you look at the National Polls, such as the one below, McCain suffered a major hit in early September, right after announcing Palin as his running mate. It continued to drop for well over a month. Yes, eventually there was a bit of a rebound, but Obama's numbers were consistently rising over that same time period.