...OBAMA TIME!

That's a very dignified and classy concession speech from McCain.

Yeah, I was glad. After the racist rabble-rousing, it was very necessary.

I can't stand the booing EVER though, even when the Obama crowds did it. It's so inappropriate.

Yeah, it's so tacky. As he made that speech, I finally got the feeling of this election actually meaning something and not being just a stupid fucking circus and a popularity contest between celebrities. It's sad, because the McCain that delivered that speech was the McCain that could have actually won this thing - if he didn't pick Palin as his running mate and stuck to his guns as "the maverick", it would have been so much closer.

That's what I said as well. Although the Maverick thing has always been only an image thing; his actions never lined up with it. But still, classy McCain could have won and I would have been more okay with that too.

Nice speech, Barry.

Very classy and progressive-sounding. I dig it.

The US finally has a better leader than Canada though... Hasn't happened in my lifetime!

I hope this is seen as a vindication of Dean's 50-state strategy, because that was a big model for the Obama campaign, and the most effective way to get actual American progressives elected, even (maybe especially) in the South. Moving to the centre, the Third Way, and playing Repub-lite all failed and hopefully the powers that be in the DNC will finally realise this.

Because it needed to be posted again

The two things I really liked about Obama's speech, and which I'm sure have been picked up by others too, are firstly that when he was listing all the demographics that voted for him he said "gay or straight" and secondly the little bit about people in other countries watching. I can't imagine McCain's victory speech would have thanked gay voters (and not just because he probably didn't get any...) or have taken a moment to promise foreign observers that relations between America and the rest of the world are about to get a lot better. It was nice.

We watched Obama's speech in social studdies, alot of people were freaked out that he got the crowd to keep going "Yes we Can" whenever he paused. It's really funny to see some of these rich kids saying how fucked they are, as contradictory as that sounds. People today were crying going "Now I can't afford college!" when there's nothing wrong

How anyone can imagine that Barack Obama is going to forge an America in which college education is less readily available is a total mystery to me. This is a man who wants to bring in universal healthcare.

That's what people were saying, Obama is trying to introduce a 4,000 tax credit towards college education, which doesn't make college free by any means, but it makes it more affordable.

I am constantly baffled by voters in America. I support or do not support a candidate based on their record and platform. When a candidate appeals to me based on that criteria, I support them. Because they are a politician, and I am concerned with their politics.

It seems that so many here do not have even the most basic understanding of politics to begin with. You either have those who treat it like a football game and support a party's candidate because that's their team, or you have those who base their opinions off of completely absurd and non-political things, to the point of creating delusions.

When Candidate X's platform says, "Lower taxes for middle class," but you say, "Candidate X will raise taxes on the middle class," or when Candidate Y says, "I will lower your taxes," while the platform says, "Raise taxes for the middle class," and you believe them, you either have some great insight that everyone else lacks (unlikely!) or you are completely ignorant and have no business voting until you educate yourself!

Even worse than that is those who are arrogantly ignorant. Not only do they have no idea about politics, but are absolutely certain that their strange views are 100% correct and you are the nut for believing otherwise.

And then there are those who call every Democratic presidential nominee that anti-Christ every four years, forgetting both that they called the last guy that and were wrong, and that the anti-Christ is a professional wrestler.

The Antichrist would have voted Obama, but he's currently in Argentina and probably not an American citizen.

You mentioned people voting when they're not educated on the issues, Lance, and it's stuff like that that's responsible for my "democracy doesn't work" stance - it's also why I don't have any interest in voting in this country. If I don't care about the issues, and I'm not interested in either candidate, then isn't it a little impolite for me to cast a vote? I disagree with the idea that people should feel pressured to vote: if you have no opinion, if you're not educated on the issues and the politics of the candidate, all you're doing is skewing the result unfairly.

That all said, I didn't realise until last night just how much my political opinions and my ways of thinking have been coloured by eight years of the world's only remaining superpower being ruled by people whose views I find abhorrent. Seeing a shitload of people going out to cast their ballots for the right candidate and rejecting eight years of rule by Bush and the GOP went a long way to restoring my faith both in the system of democracy and the country that claims to be the world's greatest example of it.

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, I immediately felt relieved, because I have been living in a country run by a government that has ruled it is allowed to imprison me indefinitely, torture me while doing so, and refuse me legal representation all on a whim simply because I am not a citizen of that country. Disgusting enough to see this arrogant attitude from the outside, but to be right in the middle of it has been quite frightening.

In theory, I am all for many people staying home and not voting. If you don't know, don't vote. Unfortunately, time and time again, low turn-out favours the more insane candidates, because the ignorant will always turn out in vote. So to counter that, I want to see huge voter turn-out because, in this country, that usually means victory for reason and logic. Whatever it takes to get some sensibility in power.

I think if this election had been as even as 2000 or 2004, with it all hinging on what essentially amounts to a coin-flip, I'd have still been defending my anti-democracy stance right now - even if Obama had won. But, as it is, voter turnout was immense and it led to a massive Democrat victory. I've believed for a long time that American politics was so divisive and so polarised that deciding things by popular vote was absurd, but last night showed that the majority of people do have at least an iota of sense and good judgement. So I guess I'm rethinking things. I haven't paid a massive amount of attention to the race so far (what I knew I mostly learnt by pop cultural osmosis) but this Barack Obama fellow is quite a guy, it seems.

He is, as usual, far too right-wing for me in a lot of ways, but that's because he's an American politician, so. As far as those go, there are very few others who could do what he may be able to do, and that is to restore some sense of respectability and responsibility to the federal government, both in the eyes of the country and the world.

It's very telling and important that his acceptance speech (and much of his campaign) has been so forward-looking, so focused on rebuilding and reuniting in all ways. He's one of the very few 21st century politicians in America.

I know the whole thing brought home how pointless British politics are. Can you imagine Gordon Brown trying to deliver a speech like that? We haven't had a real leader since Thatcher, and she was pure evil.