Whilst You Were Sleeping

Barack Obama has been re-elected as President of the United States. Oddly it seemed to happen rather suddenly, seemingly at the behest of the US networks. One moment, everything was up for grabs; the next, Ohio had been called and it was all irrevocably over.

A long pause was eventually followed by Romney's concession speech. It was a gracious and generous address, but badly gabbled as if the poor man couldn't wait to get off the stage. Understandable, but hardly presidential. It's a stunning victory for Obama: even with unemployment at 7.9% he might yet even win Florida and top 330 electoral college votes.

We still wait the President's victory address, but goodness, doesn't this country need to fix some serious issues? A house divided against itself can not stand. Will America ever come together over race, religion, and gender? If any consensus can be formed, I doubt it can be forged by a single President. It has to come from ordinary people, reaching out to each other. Americans are divided, segmented by states, by demographics, by this or that pigeon hole.

Washington warned against partisan politics. Lincoln demanded that government should be of the people, for the people. FDR told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

When are we going to listen to them?

Election Day

America, this morning. (Not my flag).

It's Baked Alaska time here in Texas. Not a reference to our November weather, in which crisp chill Autumn mornings melt into warm Summer afternoons, but to the Presidential election and my relationship with it: simultaneously hot and cold, up and down, engaged and disengaged. At one and the same time I am both on the inside looking out and on the outside looking in, like the bluebottle that has inexplicably found its way between panes of double-glazing.

The weirdness is mainly to do with the fact that I can't vote but I am affected by the result. This is nothing new, of course, as non-US citizens around the world will attest. I grew up in Britain following American politics, becoming increasingly partisan and yet unable to voice my preference. I cheered on Clinton from the sidelines in '92 and '96. In 2000 I stayed up until Florida was called for Gore and I went to bed happy that Americans had saved themselves, and us, from an idiot.

But now there is at least strong meteorological evidence that I do live in the United States (I'm still sceptical). I am even more directly affected by the outcome of this election: the quality and affordability of healthcare for my family, to pick one example. And the irony is not lost upon me that I suffer taxation without representation. Of course I do get a vote, just not here. And I can't not vote in Britain - it's my country, it needs me, wherever I am in the world! America is just where I live (allegedly - remember there's no consensus on that).

There's another slice to this Baked Alaska. Even if I could vote here, it wouldn't count. This is not a battleground state: the real election is taking place many hundreds of miles away. Despite Houston's bluish-leanings, Texas is red like its steaks and its thirty-four electoral college votes are guaranteed for Mitt Romney. The fight is in Ohio and Florida (amongst other places) and I have seen no motorcades down here, nor heard any rallies.

Lawn signs for Romney popped up overnight across the neighbourhood about a month ago, put out by friends and neighbours who would never discuss politics openly but obviously felt passionate enough about the Republican candidate to pin his colours to their, er, grass. Rather oddly, the colour in question is predominately white. Not a comment on race, I hasten to add (heaven forfend!), but on design: there's so much blank space on these signs that I cynically wondered if it was so his supporters could fill in for themselves what they thought Romney might be standing for. For a fortnight they ran unopposed but eventually the Obama signs did appear - nowhere near so many of them, of course, and often in pairs, as if consecutive homeowners had felt the need to circle the wagons. But it is irrelevant which side put theirs up first: both Republicans and Democrats feel surrounded and threatened by the others; for right or left, it is almost an act of defiance to publicly declare oneself.

Such seemingly irreconcilable differences, such polarised debate, suggests that American democracy is in poor health. Are elections decided by big-money donors instead of individual voters? Do lawyers and judges get to say whose vote counts and whose doesn't? Sadly, these questions will be asked again today. At best, there certainly isn't enough transparency in the system. At worst, it might be that one side is hell-bent on actively disenfranchising its opposition's voters in key areas.

But an hour or so ago, as I dropped my kids off at school, I walked past a line of Americans, waiting patiently to cast their ballot. Anywhere in the world, it is an inspiring sight.

Tonight I will sit down in front of as many screens as I can find and I'll watch the results come in. I'll bite my nails and drink large amounts of alcohol. I'll swear, both vituperatively and with joy. I'll scour graphs and count votes and generally cling on for dear life, utterly powerless, swept towards the result like a man in a barrel towards Niagara.

I shall be in the hands of all the people queuing today across America.

Which is, of course, just as it should be.

Narrative is all.

Storify is a website that allows you to write your own by collating nuggets of the internet. Here's one I made which amused me...

Could AV Been

On the whole, I'd much rather have a government that I disagreed with than an electorate that disagreed with me. And right now I have both. At least when a government gets things wrong I can moan about it or swear at the television; the chances are that I will find someone sympathetic to discuss it with. But the mistakes or delusions of fellow voters are sacrosanct and one is not allowed to query them, let alone over rule them.

Nothing, conversely, feels better than when one is part of a national consensus that sweeps a new government into power. That last happened in 1997 and it was very exciting. The resulting Labour administration did pretty well, tackling child poverty, investing in health and education, and so forth, but expectations were not met from the off: Labour's landslide was so great that Blair cooled on a commitment to offer a referendum on AV.

With the Tories enfeebled and dejected and other reforms taking place, such a referendum might have been accepted - although there would still have been strong resistance from Labour. And what if AV been in place for the last three elections? Well, AV doesn't prevent landslides, in fact it can exaggerate them, so Blair would certainly have been returned convincingly in 2001 and the 2005 election would have resulted in a slightly greater Labour majority than actually occurred.

What would have changed, then? Well, the Conservatives, who nearly fragmented anyway under Iain Duncan Smith, would have faced a catastrophic collapse in numbers of MPs. Certainly they could have slipped into third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Yes, the Lib Dems, remember them? The old ones I mean, the good ones who opposed the war in Iraq, and Trident, refused to countenance tuition fees for students and were honest about wanting to raise taxes on higher earners to pay for things like schools. Whatever happened to them I wonder?

Here's what would have happened in 2010 under AV. I think the Tories would have been in a weaker position than this after 10 years of AV, but even here the chances of a Lib-Lab coalition are much stronger and any Lib-Con pairing would have been much more balanced. A 'big three' cabinet post would have had to go to them (Cable as Chancellor anyone?) And I doubt very much that the Lib-Dems would have felt compelled to ditch core policies like, say, opposition to tuition fees. And what else might Clegg (or Huhne?) have demanded from Cameron as the price for cooperation? Maybe even a referendum on a switch to STV?

A Bad Night

Well, that was a shitty night of politics.

In the English local elections, the duplicitous Lib-Dems had the stuffing kicked out of them for being in the national government, whilst the Tory vote didn't really suffer at all. Labour made up some ground, but from such a low base that it hardly matters.

Worse still, having previously exterminated the Conservatives, Scottish voters turned on the Liberals as well. But, this being Scotland, they didn't have to put up with supporting an uncertain Labour party - there's the Scottish Nationalist Party to vote for instead! The SNP did so well that, all of a sudden, independence from the UK is back on the agenda, three years after the economic crisis seemed to have kicked it into the long grass for a generation.

I'm not sure whether Scotland would be better off as a separate country and I don't really care. I know that it would be disastrous for - well, what would you even call what was left? England, Wales and Northern Ireland? It's hardly 'Great Britain' (a term specifically coined after the union of England with Scotland) and it's certainly not a United Kingdom, there being only one crown left to share between the residual components.

Never mind sorting out the divorce settlement would tie up the governance of Britain for several years. What share of the national debt would the Scots take on? Should they retain part ownership of our nuclear weapons? Are they really going to compete separately in the Eurovision Song Contest?

And the cherry on top of this cake of electoral crap is the sure fire failure of the nation to embrace a change to its voting system. First Past the Post is here to stay for a generation at least. Is AV a rubbish way to elect a government? Yes it is. Is it better than FPTP? Yes it is! Do we get any closer to the Holy Grail of fair elections that is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) by sticking with FPTP? No we do not.

So a Bad Night for Britain. Most worryingly, the Tories have come out of this quite well which, when you consider the way they are merrily eviscerating public services, is an absolute disgrace.

And it's four years to the next Westminster election. If the Lib-Dems continue to be made an example of by voters whilst the Tories are allowed to get off scot free, then there's a good chance of a Conservative majority in 2015. Labour certainly have neither said nor done anything to suggest they're ready and I doubt they'll manage it before the election after next at the earliest.

And the Lib-Dems? Full disclosure: I was a member from around 2000 until, well, until Nick Clegg got elected leader actually. I think that had they propped up Labour a year ago they would be in a worse position now. The Tories (and especially the Tory press) would have spent the last year in an apoplexy of rage and vitriol. Perhaps it would have been better to let the Tories try to govern as a minority, but that too would have let the Lib-Dems vulnerable to criticism for refusing to the opportunity to be a grown-up party of government, willing to compromise or take hard decisions.

As for what happens next, well, they are in very serious trouble. Oblivion beckons. It may be that they can more openly oppose their coalition partners from now on, but the damage to their reputation has been done and it is probably irreparable. They will try and tough it out, as all politicians do, but perhaps the failure of the AV referendum is a good excuse for them to publicly change tack. If Clegg were to resign as leader, he would take a great deal of the poison with him, especially if Cable or Huhne (and who else is there?) were to take over. The new leader would have the chance to reset the relationship with the Tories and with voters, but he would almost certainly not want to walk out on the coalition. Only the Tories benefit now if Cameron calls an election - the other parties have no money to mount national campaigns and Cameron would find it easy to sell the country the line that it needs strong, single party government.

They have to try and regain some credibility and opposing the Tories from within the government is the only option. I don't think Clegg can do that and he should go. The sooner, the better.

Or, to put it another way...

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We can't all be victims, can we?

I do get angry. I try not to, but I am weak and I get very, very cross, especially when people disagree with me. It is a terrible failing, perhaps, but it might seem occasionally that it is born out a very real and sincerely held belief that I am right about everything. I promise that - on some level at least -  I do accept that other people are allowed to disagree with me and that they may even be correct to do so. What actually infuriates me is the possibility that they might be unable to concede the same point to me.

Take, for example, his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who swept into the United Kingdom this week. Infallibility is in his job description, for Darwin's sake, so it's inevitable that he is going to upset people whilst he's lecturing to them about the evils of their atheism/homosexuality/feminism/AIDS prevention methods. To  make matters worse, his (literally) dogmatic approach to these issues has caused his opponents to adopt similarly uncompromising attitude, with 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins now leading a cadre of hardline extremists. Both sides are now well dug in to increasingly entrenched positions.

The same thing has been happening politically here in the USA for years, of course, but the divisions have widened dramatically since the election of Barack Obama. Without a Republican president, the right has no responsible authority figure to keep it on the leash and so various unpleasant types like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party movement have seized the opportunity to push their more extreme agenda. Last month Beck led a rally of, possibly, several hundred thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC - ostensibly to reclaim the civil rights movement for white, right-wing Christians.

What disturbs me most is that all sides, in all these conflicts, see themselves as the victims. The leaders, possibly, are overstating the perceived threat posed by their opponents so as to energise their base, but the effect on their supporters is dramatic. Here Tea Partiers are genuinely afraid that the gays and the Muslims and the socialists are coming for them. Liberals feel swamped, scared that the political system is being run by Big Money and Fox News. Muslim American citizens have to put up with the terrifying antics of half-wits like Terry Jones and his mooted Qu'ran burning, whilst the non-Muslims majority is largely horrified by the thought of a mosque at Ground Zero. In the US, atheism is a dirty word whilst in the UK blasphemy is still a criminal offence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the same time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Pope does genuinely believe that his religion is under siege by the forces of "aggressive secularism".

I can't say how many of these myriad fears are justified, but it can't be true that all sides are simultaneously so greatly threatened. But this is the nature of the debate: polarising and utterly poisonous.

And I'm guilty of it myself - I read the news I want to read, because it reinforces the positions I've already decided to adopt. I forward on opinions and stories, but I only send them to friends that I know will be predisposed to like them too. And if I do get into a conversation with someone who thinks differently to me, I've already closed my brain down to the possibility that I might be persuaded.

But then, the only other option would be to get very, very angry.

A Very Short Note About the Election

Down-ticket.

To be honest, Texas can seem a long way from the this election sometimes. Yes, people are working very hard here, on both sides, and there are yard signs all over the place - but there's very little intensity. Nobody has any doubt that McCain will win the state - there's more chance that Obama will win Arizona. Having said that, Houston is a lot less Republican than much of Texas and I haven't spoken to anyone about the election who hasn't said they are voting, or have voted, for Obama.

'Real' America.

I'm not button-holing people either. 

The lady in front of me in the supermarket queue was very forthcoming. She had just seen 'W', she told me and had been disgusted. Not that she liked Bush himself, but the film had depicted the President on the toilet and that was unacceptable - it demeaned the office of the presidency.

Right, I thought, like he hadn't done that all by himself.

She hadn't finished though - she was going to vote for Obama. She was a Democrat. But she had voted Republican when she lived in New York, of course - things were different up there. And wasn't all this just lovely for the blacks? (The black woman working the checkout didn't twitch - just waited implacably for her customer to shut up talking to me and pay for her shopping already.)

'Of course,' the old lady continued, 'it would have been much worse if Obama had picked Lieberman as his VP, because he is a Jew.'

I might have raised an eyebrow at this point because she hurtled on to explain herself slightly. 'I'm Jewish,' she said, hand on heart. 'But if he had picked a Jew, something would happen and they would blame us. Absolutely.'

There wasn't any ambiguity about the something to which she referred. The threat of assassination is a foul undercurrent of this campaign, but it is there. CNN cut to live coverage of an Obama rally the other night and I became acutely and uncomfortably aware that this was an open-air venue. In a land that is so politically divided, where there are so many excuses for someone to mistrust or feel threatened by a fellow American, there must be someone, hundreds of people perhaps, who are scared enough of this good man to try and kill him. Let's face it, it's happened before when change threatened America. It is sinking in now that these fears will not go away once he is elected.

However, this election is about Hope and not Fear. Everyone should read this story from Hartford, Connecticut and, for extra credit, the letter in question.

And yes, the man has staff. What's your point?