On the Eve of an Election

My Ballot Paper for November 6, 2012

On a cold evening here in Princeton, New Jersey – an evening where many people in America’s North East are cold, homeless, hungry and absolutely despondent as a result of a super storm named Sandy – we sit and wonder who will emerge as President of these United States. There’s the incumbent; a one Barack Obama who was unleashed onto the world in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention and went on to become the first African American to lead this country; and then there’s Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts; a man who has been wholesomely successful and looks, acts and feels like all the 43 men who occupied the White House before Obama. We wonder who will win tomorrow especially because this country is more divided than people think. Liberal Americans cannot understand how Conservative Americans live with themselves. Who do they think they are in wanting to control a woman’s right to an abortion, liberals ask of conservatives. Why are those people so desperate for government support, and yet they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps, conservatives ask of the liberals?

Many people want the 2012 General Election to end. Most will remember how long it took to get the Republican Primary in the bag. We went through people as extreme as Michelle Bachmann who, if she had won the Republican nomination, would have been the first woman to become a Republican nominee and also, a party ticket leader from the lower house of Congress. In the end, Mitt Romney was the one who emerged winner of a brutal period – doing all kinds of things to prove to his fellow conservatives that he was the most conservative of them all.

And then there’s Obama. Although some said that Hillary Clinton was going to challenge him for the Democratic nomination, Obama had wisely pulled an Abraham Lincoln on her by putting her in his cabinet. Hillary would not go on to run against her boss and America’s most popular Democrat, Bill Clinton, fully made the case for another 4 years for Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

But what does all this mean? To be honest, it does not matter that Republicans and Democrats are split down the middle. Neither will it matter that more people like Mitt Romney over Barack Obama, or vice versa. What American democracy and elections reduce themselves to is Swing State math. Mitt Romney might win more states than Obama. That will not matter. Obama just needs to win the key states and he has enough electoral college votes to become president again. It means that people like us in New Jersey or New York do not matter. We have already been lumped in the ‘Blue State’ camp. Many people on the East Coast [those affected by Hurricane Sandy] and those on the West Coast [affected by everything] vote more liberal than conservative and so general election candidates do not waste their time by campaigning hard – unless they have a chance to influence a ‘light blue’ state. This last weekend, Mitt Romney tried to campaign in Pennsylvania – a state which has not gone for a Republican in more than 20 years. But he is trying all he can since the Republican Party ticket cannot win without Ohio – a state which is firmly in the Obama camp.

This is all exhausting, I tell you. Tomorrow, on November 6, 2012, there’s a higher than 50% chance that Obama will emerge as the victor of the presidential election. His erstwhile opponent will call him and concede the election. The stock exchange will go up again. Business will go on as normal and people will continue to be cold in their half swept away homes; some people will be called heroes while others will have to eat humble crow. For many, there will be a sigh of relief. This particular election cycle – with the non stop political ads on television and radio – will have been the most expensive in the history of mankind. US$ 2 billion will have gone to secure the most important office in the land. But most of all, many of us will go to bed, assured that the madness will not start again for a whole 4 years.

Dennis Matanda,

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