Post-Election: What Now?

Well, first, I did speculate about split control, which we appear to have gotten. Yay me. (I also predicted Feingold would win, so boo me and boo Wisconsin.)

But that's for Congress to worry about. What about you? What do you do now?

Take down your campaign signs, that's what.

Really. The election is over. There is no need to have any campaign paraphernalia on display anymore, regardless of whether you have won or lost. There's no point. There are no more votes to be gained by it. Even if people were to be convinced, it's too late. At the first opportunity, it's got to come down. All of it. Everything with the exception of bumper stickers should come down more or less immediately.

You do get a pass on bumper stickers, sort of. Those things are pretty hard to get off. But if you buy another bumper sticker at some point down the road, the next one you buy should be placed directly over the campaign sticker. (This is what I will do regarding my Feingold '10 bumper sticker, sad as I am that he lost.) And if you take some of it off, take ALL of it off. None of this taking off the 'McCain' part of a McCain/Palin sticker and leaving the 'Palin' part. Or removing Gore and leaving Lieberman, as I saw on one car yesterday. Both halves of the ticket come off.

Why? If you don't, you really kind of look like a jerk to the rest of us. The election's over. The rest of us would like to get down to the business of governing now (unlikely as it is with the group that just got voted in). We're all sick of the election. We usually wish it had ended weeks ago. We'd really rather not see a guy rub an election in our face that ended a long, long time ago. And there's always that one guy who leaves the signs up like Christmas lights in July.

I'm not kidding about July. I have seen lawn signs for a November election be left up through the following July. The more involved lawn signs you paint on a sheet of wood, but lawn signs nonetheless. Those come down too. The amount of work you put into the sign doesn't matter. It comes down immediately right along with all the others.

The Lieberman half of the Gore/Lieberman bumper sticker? That was an election in 2000. Even the guy that beat that ticket has served his two terms and left. A decade later, not even the bumper stickers are excusable. You can't cover up or remove a bumper sticker in ten years?

Most of you do this already. Note that I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Christmas Lights Guy. We don't care, Christmas Lights Guy. You're a jerk. Take it down.

And don't dump the sign down the drain, either. Someone updrain from my house did that with their McCain/Palin sign and it got stuck right below the grate at the corner of my house, remaining in clear view well through the following summer.

Poetic, in a way. But still inappropriate.