The student blog for Drake University first year seminar entitled Visual Politics

Monday, November 8, 2010

Changes..

To review the election coverage before posting I watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Yes, I will admit that is the only way I can watch anything political without being incredibly bored... I appreciate how their humorous (how many ways can we mock technology other stations are “trying” to use?) election coverage was also very informative. It’s also interesting to see things from his perspective since Stewart is clearly a democrat and the republicans definitely dominated. On this episode Stewart had special guest, a white house historian. He stated that most democrat presidents who suffer a loss at midterm are reelected which is a good sign for Obama. They also discussed the idea that Obama has so far spent most of his time working with the legislatures to pass things like health care and whether or not he will soon take more of a leadership role over his current legislator role. The historian said that Obama expected this loss at midterm so he tried to get his major plans in action while democrats were still in the majority to make things go more smoothly. He is expected to adjust his role soon.
Because of this loss this election has changed America quite a bit. The GOP is now the majority pretty much everywhere and this will most likely lead to a lot of wasted time. While in control the democrats were able to change many things such as health care, gay marriage rights, and taxes. Now that republicans are in majority their main goal is to basically undo everything that has been done. 
I personally think this is a huge waste of time. Our unemployment rate is unacceptable and school systems are definitely lacking but our main concern is stopping two people who love each other from getting married? I think it’s time to sort out our priorities and deal with the real issues. Gay marriage doesn’t even affect the people who are against it so why do they care so much? I also think republicans just need to give other ideas a chance rather than shoot them down because they’re a democrat idea. Maybe instead of just trying to kill health care right away they should be willing to compromise with the democrats to find a solution that satisfies everyone. I think it would be a good idea to just scrap the whole political party idea because neither side is very willing to work with the other. I realize that I’m not an expert but even I can see that it just leads to pointless debate and time wasting over issues because they are ideas of the other party.  This election has definitely had an impact and I’m interested to see what will happen next, from Jon Stewart’s perspective of course.
-Lauren Oliver

To watch Jon Stewart's live coverage click below.

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