Reading the New York Times and CNN webpages this morning, one would hardly see just how close this puppy was . . . CNN.com Election 2004 – U.S. President . . . or, how controversial is will remain . . . while only half the States had reported in, the Times was already speaking of a Mandate for Bush . . . CNN held out longer longer, waiting until the Kerry concession . . . but then follows suit, “The people have spoken.” and all that.

A mandate does not a margin of one or two percentage points across the board make. Mandates are landslides, huge victories, not tooth and nail battles for every single vote.

The Electoral College totals look wide, but the popular vote, where it counted, was too narrow for anyone to claim a mandate.

One would hope that Bush learns from that narrow margin, that he learns he doesn’t have the full support of the people, that he needs to do some real house clearning and reform. One would hope . . . yeah, right.

There was certainly victory, but no mandate.

This election demonstrated so many things . . . not just in the lack of mandate and bitter dirty politics of the presidency which diminshes us all, but in the passage of a number of so-called marriage-protection acts and the disenfranchisement of large blocks of minority votiers . . . that the world truly has changed, that the universe is not the one I would have hoped to have lived in, that the wheels of progress have turned back a bit, that fear and agression have taken hold, that folks care less about the rights of others and more about self-conceit, fear, religious bigotry, and just plain any ol’ bigotry.

America has changed, she’s grown up . . . not into the lady of freedom and equality and democracy we were taught about as kids either . . . the world sees her differently, a bully with a big stick.

It’s like looking at her now and seeing a foreign country.

Of course, that’s not the way she really is. No, not really. She is a bastion of freedom and love and honor. She is the greatest nation thus far in the history of the planet, bar none. However, she has a lot to learn . . . a lot to move forward, a lot to get over, a lot to change, right now, for the better . . . a lot . . . a whole lot. She has problems that need to be addressed . . . both from within and from without. Right now.

Looking at the election results, the real results, not the so-called big-picture final totals, in all issues and at all levels of society, we see an America divided, torn apart by fear, jealousy, and ideology.

She must now move forward and learn to reconcile the divide, between coastline and heartland, the richer rich and the poorer poor, the shrinking middle class and the rest, the so-called majority and the minority, the ethnic and the so-called non-ethnic, the women and the men, the establishment and the disenfranchised, the religious and the secular, the poly and the mono, the pagan and the christian and the agnostic and the atheist, all of us.

Regular readers know my views and druthers on things . . . so, they know my personal disappointment in the results . . . but, that is irrelevant if there really had been a mandate . . . with no clear mandate, there is no clear voice . . . to win or lose in a tie is to taste bitter tea and pretend it’s sweet.

Let’s hope the lack of clear mandate in and of itself guides those who remain in power, helps them realize they must tread softly, they must compromise, to keep the peace and sanity of all of us. Let’s hope. You know my personal opinion on the likelihood of that, but let’s hope in any case. It will make the tea taste a little less bitter.