But what if Obama loses?
He didn’t :-).
By this time tomorrow, polls all along the east coast will be open and ready for citizens to cast their ballots. Roughly twelve hours later, we’ll start to get the nation’s first results in an election that is, for many reasons (starting with how f*ckin’ long ago the campaigning started), historic.
Most of the polls and projections I’ve seen has Obama squarely in the lead. But then I remember the shenanigans of the 2004 election. And I remember that people don’t always tell the truth in polls, and that poll results themselves can be flawed. And that chills me.
See, if Obama loses, I will be forced to believe one of the following scenarios:
- My fellow citizens like to lie to pollsters and really do support trickle-down economics, unregulated markets, the privatization of everything, and endless war;
- My fellow (white) citizens are so racist that they can’t vote for a black man, if it’s in their best interests; or
- My country is essentially a capitalist dictatorship where people “vote,” but results are subject to tampering and therefore meaningless.
None of those scenarios sit well with me — particularly as a black woman who thought it would be another 30 years before it would even be possible to elect a black president — and I’m not sure what I’d do or believe in if, somehow, this election did not go Obama’s way.
Related:
- Blacks see hope, doubt in an Obama victory from the San Francisco Chronicle.
- If Obama Loses, Who Gets Blamed? from Slate.com
