Battleground
Yesterday I bought my plane ticket to Columbus, Ohio, so I can meet up with some friends (Zach, Alpha Male, a couple others) for Election Day and the day before. The plan is: volunteer for Obama, then go to a big victory party.
For those of you who are out of the loop, this is something a lot of people in my generation and class are doing. Bus loads of folks leave each weekend from New York (roughly 100% chance of going blue) to Pennsylvania (slightly less likely to go blue) for all sorts of Get Out The Vote efforts. I just talked to another coworker of mine who is going to Columbus for Election Day. Another is leaving for Florida soon to volunteer there. And then there's all the recent college graduates of comfortable economic status I know who have spent the past few months volunteering for the campaign.
This is obviously good for all kinds of reasons. I won't go into those.
It's also pretty terrible. For all of Obama's alleged grassrootsiness, his sails in the swing states are swollen with nor'easters of privileged yipsters. As far as I'm concerned, that goes a long way to undermine his electoral legitimacy.
...If there was such a thing as electoral legitimacy in this country at all. The very fact that victory in the U.S. presidential election depends on get out the vote efforts in a few vastly overrepresented but otherwise unremarkable provinces is a farce.
This "democracy" is a sham. We are profoundly lucky that we have a candidate who is both genuinely loved by so many and also recommended--at least against the alternative--by the cynical wisecracks of realpolitik and the groans and screeches of panic. It could so easily have gone another way.
For those of you who are out of the loop, this is something a lot of people in my generation and class are doing. Bus loads of folks leave each weekend from New York (roughly 100% chance of going blue) to Pennsylvania (slightly less likely to go blue) for all sorts of Get Out The Vote efforts. I just talked to another coworker of mine who is going to Columbus for Election Day. Another is leaving for Florida soon to volunteer there. And then there's all the recent college graduates of comfortable economic status I know who have spent the past few months volunteering for the campaign.
This is obviously good for all kinds of reasons. I won't go into those.
It's also pretty terrible. For all of Obama's alleged grassrootsiness, his sails in the swing states are swollen with nor'easters of privileged yipsters. As far as I'm concerned, that goes a long way to undermine his electoral legitimacy.
...If there was such a thing as electoral legitimacy in this country at all. The very fact that victory in the U.S. presidential election depends on get out the vote efforts in a few vastly overrepresented but otherwise unremarkable provinces is a farce.
This "democracy" is a sham. We are profoundly lucky that we have a candidate who is both genuinely loved by so many and also recommended--at least against the alternative--by the cynical wisecracks of realpolitik and the groans and screeches of panic. It could so easily have gone another way.