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Fundamental Changes on Trial in Today’s Election

Americans go to the polls today in the most consequential election since Abraham Lincoln first ran for president. Rarely has there been as stark a difference between two contending ideologies as those presented by the Democrat legislators currently on the ballot, who have been overwhelmingly supportive of President Obama’s agenda, and Republicans, who have been sharply critical of his policies at home and abroad but who have lacked the numbers in Congress to stop his tidal wave of changes.

Clearly, the approximately six years since the Democrats swept into near total power in the first Obama election have been tumultuous.  The President has delivered on his 2009 promise to fundamentally transform America, and this year voters will voice their opinion on whether the results have been beneficial or harmful. The United States is, indeed, a significantly different nation than it was before the current Administration and its staunch legislative supporters took power.

Middle class families have been the most deeply affected. A sharp reduction in jobs paying middle-income salaries accompanied by sharply rising tax, energy, food, and health costs, along with the necessity to continue supporting college graduate offspring who can’t find employment has dramatically diminished their financial stability.

The increased regulatory regime since 2009 has affected property owners and businesses alike. Its little wonder that the housing market remains weak and corporations refuse to expand or hire when there is the ever-present threat of even more onerous restrictions.

Opinions on the sweeping change in medical insurance will be a factor in voter’s decisions. Anger over misleading statements about the cost of the new plans, the ability to keep one’s own physicians, and ever-growing evidence that many procedures and prescriptions, particularly for seniors, are not covered will be a major factor.
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The most unexpected alteration in the American landscape since 2009 has been the sharp deterioration in race relations.  Mr. Obama’s election had led to widespread anticipation that an end to the few remnants of racial antipathy was at hand.  In sharp contrast, statements by both the President and Attorney General Eric Holder have reignited divisions which had been well on the way to being healed. Ironically, the financial standing of blacks has suffered under the Democrats’ economic programs. Looser immigration standards have affected both blacks and all other ethnic groups that seek to begin their path up the economic ladder through entry-level jobs that have now been taken, in many cases, by illegal aliens.

The U.S. stance in the world has changed dramatically.  Before 2009, terrorism was comparatively restrained, Russia was relatively quiet, and American military supremacy was unquestioned. By 2014, a combination of budget cuts to U.S. defenses, a reluctance to exercise power abroad, and the alienation of allies in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific has led to a dangerous global environment in which terrorist forces control more territory than ever, attacks and threats on western soil have escalated, and Russia, China, and Iran openly seek to establish a new world order in which they, not the U.S., are the predominate influences.

The most essential question to be determined today, however, is more basic.  It concerns the nature of the relationship between Americans and their government. The current power structure in Washington, consisting of the White House, the Senate majority, and the federal bureaucracy has functioned in a more “top-down” fashion than any of its predecessors, with greater assumed authority given to government to intervene in the lives of the citizenry and do so in a manner that is frequently opaque and unrestrained. That is the essence of the fundamental transformation of America since 2009, and support or opposition to that concept will be the most important question facing voters today.