(AP)

Democrat

President Barack Obama has won the election. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are probably crying behind a teleprompter right now.

There are so many people posting on Facebook about abandoning this country that you’d think the draft had just been reinstated. I just lost $10 to my roommate on a wager where we purposefully bet against our own interests regarding the election outcome. Needless to say – it has been an interesting 24 hours.

I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by this outcome. The last time I checked Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog, he suggested an 85 percent chance of an Obama victory. Some of my friends have suggested that Silver is biased because he works for the lefty New York Times, but Silver is a statistician who predicted the results of both the 2008 and 2010 elections to an extraordinary degree of precision. When the weatherman tells you there’s an 85 percent chance of rain, you pack an umbrella.

I guess I’m supposed to be pretty excited about this outcome: four more years of Obama’s enlightened despotic rule. I’m guessing comprehensive immigration reform will be the next item on his agenda, and I have no doubt that the president will dissolve our borders entirely – destroying our own national sovereignty and opening the floodgates to a nearly limitless influx of immigrants. And of course Obamacare was just step one. Now that Obama has guaranteed his re-election, he can ensure that the essential provisions of the law are put into place in 2014 so that we can destroy our current healthcare system as we know it. Doing so would usher us into a brave new world of socialized medicine a la Europe. Government stimulus spending will soon outpace consumer demand. The administration’s refusal to cut spending will result in the government having to rely almost exclusively on selling bonds to other countries to pay our skyrocketing debt, and the entirety of some people’s incomes will be co-opted to maintain financial solvency. The United States will default on its loans. The entire global economic infrastructure will topple. Thomas Hobbes’ nightmare will come true: the Constitution and all the laws that undergird it will crumble, the social contract will disappear and we’ll be forced back into the state of nature where our lives will be nasty, brutish and short.

Or – maybe not. Maybe none of that will happen at all. I have to admit, while the prospect of violent revolution always sounds attractive to me personally, we all know that this isn’t how a second Obama term will look. Hyperbole is a wonderful thing. The more inflammatory of predictions I make, the more reactions I get from people. And that’s fine, but I’d rather acknowledge reality.

Obama will now be a two-term president, but the House remains in Republican hands and no single party effectively controls the Senate right now thanks to the cloture rule. As much as we might like to suppose that another four years of Obama will inexorably send this country down the path of old-fashioned Leninism, that’s just not a possibility. We’ve had divided government since 2010, and that trend looks as though it will continue. If the president hopes to get anything done, he will necessarily have to compromise. Perhaps now that he need not worry about another re-election bid he’ll put petty politics aside, reach across the aisle, give ground and forge a consensus to put this country’s needs first. Oh, I forgot – I’m trying to avoid hyperbole.

Bub is a junior majoring in history, English and political science.

Republican

Unfortunately, the better team did not win out. Barack Obama and Joe Biden were given a second term in office despite an altogether deplorable performance on their first try.

Was this attributed to the Obama campaign raising $1.06 billion the Romney campaign’s $954 million? Possibly. Did he win thanks primarily to the incumbent advantage? Probably. Do Americans actually believe this to be a president that in the next four years will move America forward? Apparently. I however must respectfully disagree.

My main rub with President Obama and his administration is over his blatant love for an overreaching government and the love of spending my tax dollars so frivolously. In his most glorious moment, President Obama was able to take these two great loves and combine them, culminating in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. 

But alas, America has voted and there will not be a 45th president for four more years. This is the hand that we have dealt ourselves and perhaps all hope is not lost.

Obamacare has for the most of the duration of this administration been an absolute thorn in my side. I despise extreme government oversight (that’s the libertarian in me) and I consider this to be the most invasive government overstep to date. While in theory it is good to want everyone to have affordable healthcare, I think massive insurance reform would have been a more prudent route to take rather than go after the individual. Had Romney won, it is entirely possible that this would be a non-issue, but since the incumbent won out we are now forced to fight Obamacare for another four years – awesome. 

In the interest of making a “reverse compliment sandwich,” I will take a laudatory position momentarily to praise President Obama for one thing I am very much in agreement with him on. While it is not a popular position to be held in the Republican Party, I like many young conservatives agree with his stance on gay marriage. I count myself among a large group of neo-conservatives anxious over the possibility of steps being taken in this second term towards the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage. While I tend to not agree with this administration on anything, this recent position change gave me a glimmer of hope for what could be done in the next four years.

However, not everything’s coming up roses. Coming out of college, most students, myself included, are hoping to enter the job market with a prosperous economy. Currently with high unemployment, especially among young graduates, the prospect of finding a job is daunting at best and impossible at worst. Obama has won. Now would be a good time for him to directly address an economy in free-fall, scale back his push for social reforms and make his second term less of a stagnated let down than the first.

In closing, I would like to ask as a young constituent that the president take steps to better the job market as he begins his second term in office. As someone with intentions of entering law school in just a few short years I have some time for the economy to hit an upswing, but many of my peers do not. We need jobs. Our parents are snatching away the purse strings in less time than we are comfortable thinking about and I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to try to find a decent job when the unemployment rate is as high as it has been in recent years.

Dunn is a junior majoring in political science.