I know I have a reputation as devil’s advocate, but even I feel good about the fact that Barack Obama has captured the zeitgeist and looks set to secure a landslide victory in today’s election. In a two party system, it is impossible not to take sides and I don’t know how anyone could identify with the combination of a very old man and a very stupid woman when there is a young, intelligent man there for the electing.
Of course, it could still go the other way (my conspiracy theorist friend at work has £25 on McCain at 7 to 1 and seems quite pleased with himself), but surely the world isn’t so topsy-turvy that Americans could choose stupidity over sense . . . Oh God, we’re all doomed!
The words “conspiracy theory” and “friend” are pretty incompatible, surely. When we do wake up tomorrow morning with a black US president, make sure you rub his fucking nose in it, in exactly the same smug way he will if McCain, by some miracle, scrapes home.
Interestingly, Victor Chandler were offering 300-1 on a Ralph Nader victory yesterday. Makes you wonder how you set the odds on an outcome that’s a complete statistical impossibility.
I will do.
When you work in IT, you tend to become friendly with anyone who doesn’t talk about jsp and xml, even if they do talk a lot about David Icke.
“I don’t know how anyone could identify with the combination of a very old man and a very stupid woman”
Almost by definition, very old men and very stupid women would identify with them immediately. Also, perhaps, very old women and very stupid men.
(There’s an interesting piece about how Palin got on to the ticket over here. I don’t think she is very stupid. But she’s clearly way out of her depth.)
Aren’t people even vaguely aspirational nowadays?
Re: stupidity Have you see this?
Isn’t it just the “government of the people, by the people” thing, of how voters seem keen to elect one of their own? I think it’s one of the reasons why Bush’s good ol’ boy act beat Gore (who should won at a canter) in 1992; and it’s the same trick that both Blair and Cameron have successfully pulled, albeit with different target markets to Dubya. If the Republicans had a halfway capable candidate with a similarly chummy schtick to Bush (or even if he had a halfway capable running mate, since Palin’s apparently done more harm than good), they’d probably waltz home, despite the fact that Obama’s probably the most impressive candidate since… Johnson? Eisenhower?