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Jewish World Review Nov. 3, 2010 / 27 Mar-Cheshvan, 5771 The Morning After By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If the polls were unerring, historians would now be debating the pros and cons of the first Dewey administration. But as I write these lines, Americans are still observing the ritual, communion and act of faith known as voting. Perhaps it's not entirely coincidence that those little voting booths we enter to cast our ballot resemble confessionals. By the time the polls finally closed across the country, The People in all their electoral majesty had spoken, God help us all. As you read these lines, you'll know all about it, or rather most of it. For there are always those cliffhangers, competing victory announcements notwithstanding. Some of the claims and counterclaims can go on for days, for weeks ...for whole historical periods. Remember the Mexican standoff (if such a phrase is still allowed in our politically correct, post- And just who won the Hayes-Tilden bout in '76 -- that's 1876 -- is still disputed. I'd say the Old Confederacy did, since the compromise that finally ended that election also ended the federal occupation of the Southern states. But some might argue even with that once safe historical generalization. Of horse races, jury trials and American elections, there's no sure predicting. Sometimes there's no telling even after the election's over. If the pollsters got it right this time, the Republicans will have recaptured the House and the Democrats will have held on to the It's not the proclamations of victory but the concessions of defeat, the true test of grace under pressure, that interest some of us most. Those are the real measures of character. For election-night style, few American politicians have ever matched If the verdict at the polls Tuesday bore out the pollsters, it's the If the Republicans are celebrating this week, here's hoping that somewhere just one of their spokesmen will have had the candor to say what the real lesson of any As for the Democrats, here's hoping they'll react to any setback by proving educable -- that they'll rethink losing propositions like ObamaCare, the cap-and-trade job killer, socking it to capital by their refusal to extend all the Bush Era tax cuts, bailouts in all directions, and pork-stuffed stimulus packages that don't stimulate but strangle the economy. Wouldn't it be something if one of the Democrats' spokespersons, preferably the president himself, would react the way But if the pollsters turn out to have been wrong once again, and
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