Change has been a big word this year just like re-form was in O Brother Where Art Thou's election bits. The greatest concern I have going forward is that the polls will bite us in the ass and no one will show up out of complacency. The next greatest concern I have for us as a country is who all of our Democratic candidates being swept in on this mandate really are.
I wonder who some of these "Democratic" candidates on down-ticket races really are, because at least in Texas, we have plenty of Republicans, Libertarians, and Ron Paul supporters who beat actual Democrats in the Democratic primaries in March. Record turnout of people unfamiliar with anyone on the ballot other than Clinton or Obama combined with Republicans voting in the Dem primary to throw things off results in some outlying weirdos popping up. Our state party is only getting warmed up for how much sheer mass they have now in terms of participants, and it will be some time before they really build out the infrastructure to support the coming return to majority the Democrats will have in Texas.
In Williamson County, here in Texas, we have a re-formed Bush Republican (Gregory Windham) running as a Democrat against the incumbent 3rd Precinct County Commissioner. He said to me once that "George Bush Sr. brought me into the Republican Party, and George Bush Jr. pulled me out." He's a very forthright, aggressive kind of guy...rough around the edges. He's the old-school country-fried, homegrown, salt of the earth Dixiecrat that ruled Texas for decades. I'm not really worried about him. There are people running in East Texas (and other areas) on the Dem ticket who are avowed "Ron Paul Republicans" who are Fair Tax supporting, anarchistic-leaning Libertarians who wanted "a real shot".
The worst outcome I can see aside from a complacency-induced McCain win is a bunch of weirdos who wound up the "Democratic candidate" across the country making the party and by extension, the Obama Mandate, look like the doom-bringing prophecy the right-wingers are pitching hard at this point.
Assuming my fears are ill-founded (and I hope they are), the optimism I have at present for my home state is based on the Texas ballot I saw and cast last week.*
The Texas ballot exclusively gives you the options of John McCain, Barack Obama, and Bob Barr. No Nader, no McKinney, none of the other parties that all show up on the Colorado ballot among others. As always you can write-in, but I don't expect to see many Dem votes bleed off there this year in Texas.
There are Good Ol' Boys who won't vote for Barack Obama because he's black and they believe the socialist bullshit flying around...but they don't want to vote for John McCain either. If their "Perot vote" for Barr helps the state go to Obama, as extremely unlikely as that may be, they'll not blink and blame it on Obama's African voodoo socialist brainwashing.
Mark my words, this is the year that will change people's minds about whether Democrats can win in Texas, for better or even worse. Texans are tired of inefficient leadership handing money, land, and roads to corporations... "Republicans" and Democrats alike. By 2012, the electoral map could be even more lopsided than people are predicting it'll be on 4 November, especially if Sarah Palin really guns for the top job, truly ending her career outside of Alaska.
* I must note here that I cast it on a touch-screen machine, which makes the fact that I "cast a vote" tenuous at best, depending on who you are. The big 2010 ballot initiative in Texas will be mandating optical scan ballots, I bet.