Three interesting/fun things about the US election

I’ve been feeling a certain amount of shameful joy/glee that the state of Colorado went Democrat. It’s the home of Focus on the Family and various other militantly-Republican Christian organisations, so the fact that more people there voted for Barack Obama means something significant I think.

I’m wondering how the editorial in the next edition of Focus’ ‘Citizen’ magazine will react to the results and whether Focus will now concentrate their efforts on living up to the demands of this Biblical injunction. Somehow I doubt it.

The swing to Obama was massive across the Republican heartland. I work with a guy who spent some time in Texas working for a Christian organisation and became very pro-Republican as a result. In 2004 he said that he admired George W Bush’s stance on “values” (a hard-to-define term much in use among those who have the Christian = Republican = Christian mentality).

However yesterday this same guy told me he was glad Obama won. If Obama is winning over staunch conservatives, then maybe there’s a chance the cultural battle-lines are blurring and the polarisation of American culture (which has led to Christianity marginalising itself through unblinking support by many vocal Christians for one particular party) may reverse.

The third thing is that Cathy told me Obama had promised his daughters that if they moved to the White House, they could have a puppy. How happy must they be now? No wonder as the results came in they were still beaming from ear-to-ear despite looking like they so needed to go to bed!

“Yay, Daddy’s become president! Can we get a puppy now, Mom?”