An American election – part 1
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Last week when we walked out of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art we were assailed by a young clipboard-laden woman asking us whether we’d be interested in helping rid the country of a bad government that had taken the country to war on false pretences. We were in a hurry so I simply said: “We’re from Australia and we did our bit and got rid of our government last year.”
Tomorrow it’s America’s turn.
Almost every American I spoke to was an Obama support and almost all of them were still concerned about how the vote would go. I am not. Obama has been in front of McCain in every national poll for six weeks. He is not in danger of losing any of the states John Kerry won when he tried to dethrone George W Bush in 2004 and he’s ahead in about a dozen battleground states. Polls are a science and they will not be that wildly inaccurate but like the 2007 Australian election that sent John Howard packing it’s not in the media’s best interest to say it’s all over too soon.
Tonight we arrive in New York and I’m going to scope out a few bars that might be suitable to watch the election in tomorrow night. I’ll try to post as regularly as I can and capture some of the mood before and after the vote tomorrow.
