The US Election

I don’t actually think it’ll be that close tomorrow night. It suits the American media to talk up an Election too close to call but they don’t tell the whole story and mostly only the facts that their one-eyed audience wants to hear. As an aside I’m watching now from afar (650 miles across the pond) America becoming increasingly split. Split between the have and have-nots and very differing liberal and conservative thinking.

Before the live debates Obama was comfortably ahead but Romney had a real surge particularly after his walkover in the 1st debate, yet since the Republican has not been convincing enough to hammer home the advantage that suddenly came his way.

In recent days Obama has inched further ahead and according to statistician Nate Silver of the equally lauded and derided FiveThirtyEight blog, the President is ahead in 19 of the 22 swing states and predicts a 85% chance of him being re-elected.

That might be pushing it, although Silver’s blog is well worth a read. What is true is that Obama is a different man this time around. He appears more introverted and less dynamic than he was when he swept to power 4 years ago on a sea of change.

Change was harder to do than he imagined. His dogged determination to provide healthcare to all has proved hard to sell to all Americans, Obama’s early promises to close Guantanamo Bay and bring about a new era of trust between the US and the Muslim world have turned to dust and he accelerated the number of unemployed and not reversed it. He no doubt over-promised, but he inherited an overweight pug and not a prized poodle.

It is also true that in Congress the Republicans waged a brutal and remorseless campaign to frustrate him. The level of vitriol and abuse Obama took at the hands of insurgent Tea Party activists went far beyond civilised political disagreement.

As for Mitt Romney, the ultimate flip-flopper, who will blow with the wind to garner any ounce of popularity from a party that represents multi millionaires, religious nuts and broken tooth, gun-toting  farmers, he has held the opportunity to win this election in his hands but it would appear the Independents, of which there are more and more, simply don’t trust his blinkered view of his country and the world. He gave us a taste of his abilities overseas when he was in London before the Olympics and his continual outbursts towards the Chinese.

Obama is a clever and likeable man, and those of you that have been following my blog since the onset have known I have watched him with interest since 2004. He has not done a great job, be he has done a good job and I reckon he deserves a chance to finish what he started. We’ll wait and see.