Choice

It’s been all about choice.

Tuesday, the American voters made their choice to give Barack Obama another four years to try to bring us out of the Bush-era recession, to convince members of Congress that “compromise” is not a dirty word, and to get the disparate views in this country to work toward a common good.

A lot of the issues focused on choice: whom you can love; whom you can marry; who controls your health care; how much do you want your government to do for you; the list goes on.

And last, but not least, the Republicans have to figure out whether they went too far to the reactionary right or not far enough. And depending on that answer, they have to choose whether to move back toward the central position of most US citizens, or to move even farther to the rigid, reactionary right.

Thomas Friedman said it well in his column today Hope and Change, Part 2.  This is the closing paragraph:

The votes have been counted. President Obama now needs to get to work to justify the second chance the country has given him, and the Republicans need to get to work understanding why that happened.