{"id":351,"date":"2012-11-08T02:06:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T02:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/?p=351"},"modified":"2012-12-04T05:26:49","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T05:26:49","slug":"election-night-in-the-windy-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/2012\/11\/08\/election-night-in-the-windy-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Night in The Windy City"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state of Illinois was considered by many to be decided before election night even began. Nevertheless, I can image it was exciting for President Obama, the 44th<\/sup> leader of the United States of America, to see his home-state turn blue last night. Big O took 57.8% of votes in Illinois, where 900,000 people chose to vote early including the President himself. \u00a0Obama chose to spend November 6th<\/sup> in his hometown of Chicago, sharing a family dinner at home and then heading to the Merchandise Mart where he gave his acceptance speech. His speech gave credit to the voters who have given the President the chance to move forward and continue to do the job that was entrusted to him in 2008. He promises that he has listened to Americans about what needs to happen in order for this country to regain his footing and proudly thanked Vice President Joe Biden, his wife, and his daughters.<\/p>\n

The mood in Chicago was much less celebratory than Obama\u2019s first victory in 2008\u2014only 20,000 people were in attendance for his rally as opposed to 200,000 four years ago. The feeling was described less as excitement and more as relief. This is interesting for Democrats especially, many of whom acknowledge that the President\u2019s policies have not helped our nation to progress as much as they\u2019d like, especially to help decrease the deficit, but prefer him to Romney. The \u201clesser of two evils\u201d viewpoint was widespread throughout America in this historic election. It seems that voters are excited for the Democrats to keep hold of the White House but aware that Obama needs to work a lot harder on job creation and diminishing the deficit before they will cheer as loudly for him again.\"\"<\/p>\n

The real excitement in Illinois came from the four congressional seats won by Democrats in the House. Tammy Duckworth, an army veteran who lost both legs from injuries sustained by a blast in Iraq, won one seat for the Democrats. Another winner, somewhat shockingly was Democrat Jesse L. Jackson, who is currently under investigation for attempting to sell President Obama\u2019s senate seat after he was elected to the presidency. He recently was hospitalized for mental illness as well. Still, he somehow managed to garner the majority and keep another democratic seat in Illinois.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall, Illinois was an exciting place to watch the election and proud to host their hometown hero elected to his second term as President. Illinois residents stand behind Obama, though they contribute to the pressure put on Obama to perform better this time around and make serious progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state of Illinois was considered by many to be decided before election night even began. Nevertheless, I can image it was exciting for President Obama, the 44th leader of the United States of America, to see his home-state turn blue last night. Big O took 57.8% of votes in Illinois, where 900,000 people chose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44333],"tags":[28959,44340,12594,44339,44309,39638,44236,39639],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-night-coverage","tag-chicago","tag-democrats","tag-election","tag-illinois","tag-meg","tag-39638","tag-ndjed","tag-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}