

Now, it is up to those newly elected, and to those who retained their offices, to listen to that message. The question is, will they?

President Obama, visibly shaken by the upsets the Democratic party suffered at the polls, has said he is willing to work with the Republicans on many of the issues that have so polarized the country. But it remains to be seen if that is a true commitment to a new attitude, or just political lip service. There are those who are so opposed to the President that they will automatically dismiss anything he says or does.

The Republicans, for their part, must not sit around gloating, with a “we showed them attitude.” It’s way past time for both parties to stop the finger pointing, stop the name calling, and to work together to get this country back on track. That will not happen as long as our elected officials keep the mindset we have seen for too many years.

So there you have it, Mr. and Ms. Congressman and Senator. You worked hard to win the voters’ trust. You were victorious in your election bids. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. The people have spoken. You know what they want. Now give it to them.


29 Comments on The People Have Spoken

  1. Joe says:

    Democrats and republicans working together? They are all too eager to hurt the other for that to happen, but I hope for the sake of the UNITED STATES it happens this time.

  2. Connie Braidh says:

    I can remember when elected politicians once elected worked together for the good of the country rather than such partisan politics as has developed in the last 10-15 years. It can happen.

    BUT and its a big but both the Democrats/Obama and the Republicans must want to work together. I think the other elected Democrats besides Obama and Reed can do that. I think the Republicans can do that. The really big question is can Obama accept the election, more towards the center and become a consensus builder. Clinton did it and he is considered one of the better Presidents in recent times.

    Here’s hoping Obama can set outside his personal agenda and begin to understand it take consensus between Republicans, Independents and Democrats to run this country. If Obama and his advisers have any smarts, they will look back over history and LEARN from Obama’s mistakes and others.

    I don’t have a lot of hope but I do have some. The next two years will tell. But if Obama becomes an obstructionist and vetos everything, he will be out. The same with the Republicans. If they just sit on their hands and block everything, they will be out. They all (Republicans and Democrats) must try to pass legislation for the good of the country. It’s going to be an interesting 2 years.

  3. Dale says:

    In order for bi-partisanship to work, there has to be a middle ground from which to start from. It was always the moderates in both parties who provided this anchor, this meeting place. Well, the moderates were targeted by the Tea Party and most are out. There is already a Tea Party hitlist for 2012. The Republicans have already announced that they will not compromise.

    I agree with Connie. This is going to be interesting 2 years.

  4. MichaelG says:

    Americans are worried about the economy and the budget. But we also don’t want to do any of the things necessary to fix the problem.

    The economy is not going to recover until all the bad debt is written off. That means millions of foreclosures and some large bankruptcies. It means house prices falling until they reach what the market will pay. This is the process that Japan refused to let happy, at the cost of 20 years of recession.

    The budget is not going to be fixed without cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Defense. Not even the Tea Party wants to cut any one of those. ObamaCare will make the Medicare and Medicaid problems worse, not better. No one is talking about cutting Defense.

    So it doesn’t matter who you have in office if the people aren’t serious. We’re going down the route of California, which continues to procrastinate and pass phony budgets until its credit rating is destroyed.

    Just keep watching what California does. It’s the future for the entire country. On top of that, the country as a whole can’t really recover without California anyway. It’s a big percentage of the housing problem and of the economy.

  5. Bob D says:

    It always amazes me that after all the pre-election name calling, S**t slinging and attempts at destroying their opponent personally, instead of discussing the issues and telling us what they’ll do differently, how the losers are SO willing to compromise!!!! Obama is a Socialist and wants this country to be the same. Don’t hold your breath for anything different.

  6. Claire says:

    Thank you America! We the people have spoken. Now, as Nick says, please listen and act.

  7. Jerry says:

    My wife and I had to sell out park model in Tucson and move to Texas because there are only 3 parkinson’s doctors in the state of Arizona and all three stopped taking medicare patients. Two of the docs are at Mayo Clinic and Mayo no longer takes medicare. Why–very simple. The pay is too small and it takes too long to get paid. When we moved to Texas, we moved to a large city that had a parkinson’s doc but now it’s hard to find a family doc that is taking new medicare patients. We, as senior citizens, must get this problem with medicare and doctors worked out. I hope the election results will help.

  8. Jim says:

    2012 is just around the corner and ALL the lawmakers better be doing the will of the people of the UNITED STATES.

    We will be back to the polls!

    Republicans are not going to get a free pass and surely the Democrats know they are on the bubble.

    Yes, it will be an interesting two years.

  9. Dennise says:

    Nothing will change. I stand by what Rick Perrillo (D-Va) told his supporters when he lost his re-election bid:

    “I wake up this morning inspired by the people-powered, conviction politics we offered and the incredible results it produced. I feel bolstered by a team that understands real change does not happen with one election night victory or end with one loss. We shouldn’t have expected nirvana after our win in 2008 and we shouldn’t expect armageddon now. As I told the crowd last night, my father made me promise when I entered politics that I would always consider Judgement Day more important than election day, because doing what’s right is more important than winning elections. I believe he is smiling on us today, and that he is thankful for all of you who sacrificed so much to offer a better kind of politics in America.”

    Now stop the whining…and try to govern, not just impede. The party of no will continue…doing what’s right is not part of the agenda…the failure of President is all that matters to them now.


  10. Garry says:

    Why does everyone think SS is the problem. It is a program that is funded by those who draw and the only problems it would face is that it has been used to pay for everything but SS and many who never paid SS have been added to the program. Early on Farmers could opt out and most did then all at once they thought it was a grand idea so they paid in for 5 years or less then drew as if they had been in all along. Recently we have let those who moved to the country late in life draw.

    Come on people SS is not the problem. Automatic raises for house and senate as well as 2 billion dollar trips for the president are.

    Just a few years back Harry and Bess Truman drove from the White House back to her little house in Independence in their own private automobile. Now the speaker of the house flies home in a government plane every weekend. At what cost I can only guess and I won’t try. We spend billions on Highways that last 2-3 years at most, but we let trucking company’s tear them up with overloaded trailers and rarely even bother to open a weigh station.

    We out source everything but the kitchen sink and pay twice what it cost us to do it with direct government workers and the people doing the job are paid at low wages while the contractors siphon enough off top that the workers could have really been self succulent. We let company’s like Kmart and GM be so mismanaged the can’t pay the obligations then bail them out and save the Union benefits so they will vote for those that bail them out. But for some reason all the salaried between the Union and the top managers are discarded like yesterdays trash.

    And welfare as we know it ended several years ago according to Bill Clinton yet we still pay Babies to have Babies and when they get too old the next generation becomes the welfare lady of support and starts the Babies routine.

    We move much of the Manufacturing off shore to the for lowest wages and pay some CEO hundreds millions to make this decision. Then when they fail we give them another 40 million to fire them and hire them to run a campaign for president.

    Oh yes SS is killing the country.

  11. To a great extent I agree with MichaelG (I often do) but there are lots of places that cuts can be made.

    A family with a debt crisis doesn’t have to cut out buying food, paying the insurance, and paying the mortgage, but they can reduce expenses $10 here and $10 there. Similarly our government can cut $10 Billion here and there.

    Another thing they can do is step out of the way and let the economy grow! Create a stable tax and regulatory environment so business large and small can forecast, plan, and grow!


  12. One problem we have is that the far Left seems to think that businesses are evil. Where do they think JOBS come from???

  13. Greg S. says:

    I heard a Repubican Congressional candidate say “We’re not going to Washington to compromise. We are not going to Washington to negotiate. We are going to Washington to prevail.”

    That attitude will keep us right where we have been. Both parties MUST work together to accomplish anything and I don’t think they are going to do that.

  14. Dave B. says:

    How much time did we give the present administration to fix things? Did they not walk into a mess that was there for quite awhile festering? I’ll give the newly elected officials the same amount of time to show how much they can do. Then I’ll ask, are you better off now than 2 years ago? Is everything all better now? I think already I know the answer. They’re all just a bunch of hot air just like their predecessors. They want to cut spending but as of yet haven’t said where because the people affected will be upset. (don’t cut anything that affects me). The election has been over for a couple of days now, why haven’t things changed yet?

  15. Sharon Mansfield says:

    Yes outsourced jobs are a problem. Yes housing prices and foreclosures are a problem. Yes corporate greed is a problem. But until we deal with the problem of illegal immigration the rest is nothing. Solve that problem and we can put billions of dollars back to work for the American people. I retired in June from a Texas school system where I was the bookkeeper. Over the last 7 years our student numbers have more than tripled and 90% of those students were the children of illegal families. Our tax base did not increase because few of those families paid taxes. The result has been doing more and more with less and less. Our budget for school lunches skyrocketed because these children did not have money to buy lunch. We instituted a free breakfast program because they were not getting adequate breakfasts at home. We had to hire more bilingual teachers, we had to cut all extracurricular activities, and we still fell further and further behind. The art and music departments were dissolved. Field trips were halted. All to accommodate an ever growing student population of children who are here illegally. This is just a tiny example of what is happening all over this country. Solve that problem and maybe we can pay for a quality of life for American citizens that they deserve.

  16. Jack Simon says:

    That’s what gets me, Sharon. The Republicans and Conservatives are raging about Obamacare bankrupting the country, but nobody wants to do a thing about the illegals who are bleeding us dry in every state in the nation because they don’t want to be called racists. Factor in the cost of schooling, medical care, law enforcement costs, housing the thousands of illegals in every prison in the country etc etc etc that all go to deal with the wetbacks and Obamacare is nothing!

  17. Jack Simon says:

    Nick, thanks for changing my comment for me. I apologize for the language, I got carried away.

  18. Paul Stough says:

    Sharon, you are so right on! But with the Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians all wanting to have millions of illegal aliens in the country for differing reasons, things are not likely to change. Even though some Republicans have talked about getting the illegals out of the country, I am not holding my breath till they do something about the problem. GW and the Republican Congress had six years to do something, and yet did nothing. John McCain as a senator co-sponsored a bill with the late Senator Kennedy to allow for amnesty for millions of illegals, and President Reagan, hero to many conservatives, signed a law that gave amnesty to 3 million illegals.

    The Democrats want millions of illegals to gain amnesty so as to replenish the millions of Democrats who are centrists who are being driven out of the Party by the “wacko leftists”.

    More later,

  19. Norman says:

    It don’t matter whos in office. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s been that way all of my 82 years. Never changed. Never will.

  20. John Morelli says:

    Stop bitching about “illegal aliens”!! We were all illegal aliens when we came here and subjugated the Indians. Lazy spoiled white Americans don’t want the jobs that Latinos will do, and lazy welfare rats of any color won’t work at all!

  21. Linda P. says:

    Is anyone here really naive enough to think that things are going to change just because the Republicans were so victorious? It’s a different fox in the hen house, but it’s still a fox.

  22. Paul Stough says:

    John- What laws did the people living in the USA have regarding immigration when the Europeans came here? What laws were broken?

    If you feel guilty about being an illegal alien, I suggest you go back to which ever country you choose.

    More later,

  23. Carey McConnell says:

    And here, I thought we needed to give the illegals amnesty so that they could help pay for our social security! I had no idea we were losing our centrist Democrats.

    I too believe that little will be done by the congress in the next two years. They are already posturing like bullies in the school yard. And don’t forget, all of the wonderful things that will probably get passed in the house will never make it through the same old senate. Although, they will probably pass the continuation of the Bush tax cuts which will be another $700 Billion over the next 10 years that we will need to cover somehow.

    I love it when someone, a politition or a pundit or whomever, claims to know what it is that the American people want. I bet those folks can predict the weather just as well.

  24. John Knoll says:

    If the politicians really wanted to solve the illegals problem they could make every able-bodied person on welfare go to work.
    I remember the Manpower offices in every neighborhood. If you wanted to collect a welfare check you had to show up in the morning,and sign in. Then you would be put on a bus and taken to a construction site, or a landscaper, or farmer could pick you up at the office and take you. But that would lose the welfare’s vote. It’s easier just to let illegal aliens in to do the work.
    I also remember my father telling how he worked in the Civil Conservation Corp during the Great Depression. If he wanted to eat he went to work!!!

  25. Paul Stough says:

    John-How would that stop the illegals from coming here? If more jobs paid better wages, more people would get jobs, and get off welfare.


  26. Frank Serrao says:

    It was such a fun night watching the liberals finally go down one after the other. They couldn’t fool all the people all the time anymore. It just caught up with them. I couldn’t believe Barbara Boxer, one of the biggest spenders in the Senate got re-elected especially considering the mess California is in. I hope they don’t expect the country to bail out their pension plans among other things. We’re finally getting rid of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Boy was she an airhead. Another disappointment was Harry Reid an outrageous liberal spender getting re-elected in Nevada which has the highest unemployment in the nation. Boy are people dumb or what? It goes to show you that Nevada and California voters must have the lowest IQ’s in the nation. Wow! Unbelievable. We owe a lot to the Tea Party for ushering the demise of these big spenders and crooks.

    I hope they finish the job in 2012 and get rid of the “annointed one” in the White House.

  27. Rob Fox says:

    So, encouraged by some warm comments from my last post, I would like to add to my observations on America. As always, If you feel that I’ve got the wrong end of the stick or that I’ve missed an important point, please educate me.

    As a young boy growing up in rural England. My earliest awareness of America was the birthday gift from a Great Aunt living in Los Angeles. American dollars. I can’t remember how many (you needed 4 to get a British Pound) but it was just a gateway to fantastic stories of gold rush, earthquake and fire. When tv came to the house, I was mesmerised by “The Lone Ranger”, “Rin TIn Tin” and the films depicting the Cowboy and Indian era. I was in no doubt that America was the most exciting place in the whole World. The land of opportunity. The story of America is probably the best documented rise of any nation.

    Not forgetting that there was already a perfectly viable civilisation residing in America, lets consider why the Europeans came. Once the notion of a “flat Earth” had been overcome, the monarchs of Europe were willing to speculate and finance explorers to find new lands and resources to exploit. These monarchs were the ultimate CEO’s and hedge fund managers of their day. Initially, there must have been some disappointment as there wasn’t gold and silver everywhere and they then expended a lot of energy battling and robbing each other. Eventually the monarchs of England, France and Spain recognised that control of the New World was going to be a giant land grab. Having made claims, in the name of the CEO (I mean King), people were encouraged to sail, settle and occupy. The adventurous, disaffected and the persecuted came in search of opportunity and a better life. It was a very hard life for the majority but there was freedom. In return they grew the monarch’s kingdom and wealth.

    American pioneers eventually saw that they were being exploited by the King and the aristocracy, whose bidding was undertaken by the Parliament and the Army. The patriots revolted in order to assert there natural right as free men. America was uniquely blessed with an opportunity to establish a republic from the ground up (not top down). They understood the need for government but were very aware of it’s vulnerability to corruption; working to the benefit of a few rather than all the people. America grew to be the most successful nation in the World.

    America has reached a critical point in it’s development. The government has succumbed to vulnerability and has been corrupted successively over the last 50 or more years. The new aristocracy has been siphoning off the capital and is now looking to exploit new lands in the East. Assets that remain in the USA are being squeezed tightly and jobs are being exported at a high rate. The currency is being manipulated to prolong advantage and at the expense of your savings (if there are any left). The parasite has infected the government establishment of both parties. It is incapable of recognising the danger.

    Immigration, healthcare, employment, deficit, etc are all huge and important issues. They must be discussed rationally. Simply arguing about these issues distracts America from addressing the real issue: corruption. The new aristocracy has bankrolled the candidate and will now expect them to press home the advantage. It matters not if you are Democrat or Republican; Liberal or Conservative – the bad guys are only interested in themselves. They just want you to argue amongst yourselves to divert your attention. I save my most profound warning to all party activists. Ask where the finance is coming from? Who is pulling the strings? What motivates these people to spend so much money to affect the outcome of an election? Do you really think they have your best interests at heart.

    Please don’t sit back a wait for two years to “see how it goes”. Stay on top of your political representatives in Washington and your State capitals. Make them explain their actions. Have them understand that they are accountable to you, the People.

    For the sake of your children, let America be the land of your opportunity once again.

  28. Dale says:

    Rob: Thank you.

    If the new Tea Partiers think they will have much pull in the new congress, I believe they are mistaken. The establishment Republicans are well entrenched and are heavily beholden to the corporate interests that financed them. They are already working hard to keep the Tea Partiers away from the prize so to speak.

    Democrats refused to stand up for their values in this election and they got slaughtered. They are heavily beholden to unions but at least this is public knowledge. What is not public knowledge is what corporations so heavily invested in the Republicans and to whom the Republicans are beholden to.

    I fear many folks are going to be deeply disappointed.

  29. Tom Doyle says:

    No! The people have not spoken. Only a very small percentage of the people have spoken and slightly more than 50% of those people swayed the election. So now the rest of us have to put up with “Boner” for the next two years.

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