The American presidential election (91)
Last night, I stayed up watching CNN until 3 am London time before I had to crash out. By then, I was sure that Barack Obama had won the American presidential election even though the network had still not called it for the Democratic candidate. This evening, together with my American friend Eric Lee, I was down at the central London restaurant Texas Embassy for a joyous celebration event organised by the Democrats Abroad UK.
Last night was not actually as thrilling as I expected because, unlike a British general election night, we did not have a lot of actual results with increasingly accurate forecasts of the final tally; instead we had various exit polls and very partial state results based on small portions of the total vote and the networks were so cautious that they didn’t want to estimate the final outcome until I was fast asleep. Even now, I don’t know the full result – we’re still waiting for North Carolina (15 votes) and Missouri (11 votes).
But let me offer my first thoughts.
We have reached the end of the longest, the most expensive, the most exciting, and quite simply the most surprising US presidential race of my six decades. For a generation, we will compare future races to this one and describe them as’the most whatever’ since the Obama victory.
In both the Democratic primaries and the general election, Barack Obama ran a near flawless campaign – always on message, positive and hopeful, immensely fluent, and utterly dignified. He had a brilliant organisation on the ground backed by thousands and thousands of enthusiastic volunteers, made very sophisticated use of the Net, and secured jaw-dropping amounts of money.
The result was an outstanding success. A week ago, I blogged “I reckon that Obama could win the national vote by around 5-7% and win the Electoral College by 60-70 votes”. We don’t know the final result yet, but it looks as if Obama took about 6% more of the national vote than John McCain so that I was spot on here. However, the oddities of the Electoral College and the brilliance of the Obama campaign mean that my guess on the College margin of victory was a serious underestimate. Obama won not just the large battleground states of Florida (27 votes), Pennsylvania (21) and Ohio (20), but garnered traditional Republican states too.
So the 44th President of the United States will be the first African-American in the Oval Office. The importance of this for Americans and the world can hardly be overstated. To every American who voted for Obama – yes you did and the world thanks you.
Now we have to have realistic expectations. As Obama put it in his amusing speech to the New York charity event, he was not born in a manger. The challenges he faces – at home and abroad – are huge and, talented and charismatic as he is, he can only achieve so much. But he has a landslide victory, solid majorities in both the House and the Senate, some outstanding advisers, and the goodwill of the world.
I’ll be watching and I’ll be blogging.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
‘Now we have to have realistic expectations.’
I agree, Roger, but Obama will ultimately have to shoulder some of the blame for creating unrealistic expectations with his soaring (and sometimes vague) rhetoric.
But still, I agree with you…
The other interesting thing is that his coalition is quite broad and I wonder how robust it will be on specific policy issues…
Some people I have talked to (who supported him) have very different ideas of what his vision of change will bring about.
Was it like that in 1997 when Blair came to power?