Election day 2008!
Vote early, vote often! Now we get to find out what the fine folks in the United States want. Besides the obvious desire to find out who is going to win the various elections, it'll also be interesting to see by what margin they win and also how accurate the polling was. I don't have any predictions except that I think the election may end up being a little closer than most people expect it to be. This country is still very divided over cultural issues, and as long as that continues we will continue to have close elections, essentially TWO AMERICAS - not two Americas rich and poor, but instead two Americas urban and rural, and those two electorates really do want fundamentally different things. All elections in recent memory have been won at the margins and have been decided by a very small number of uncommitted voters in the center, and I think this election will be no different. No matter who wins I think they win without much of a mandate, though both candidates for President would claim one if they win the election by even a single percentage point. Maybe I'll be wrong and Obama or McCain will run away with the election, but I kind of doubt it - I don't think it matters who the Democratic and Republican candidates are, we'd get nearly a 50-50 vote no matter who was running, no matter how great one or the other is. Until rural and city folk can come together on some things and stop trying to jam their views down the other's throat we're going to keep having elections like this. At this time in history, half of the American public simply doesn't trust the other half, and I don't see much in this election to change that. The one glimmer of hope is that this time the Republicans are running a centrist, and the Democratic candidate is a populist, and both of those candidates are at least courting the middle.