If you don't know what's going on right now, then hello there, I hope it's comfortable and not too cold under that rock. It's election day, and Americans are voting for their next President.
My situation is very strange, being a Brit living in America (so of course unable to vote) and watching the election campaign unfold, especially as I live in Mississippi... and I do not agree with how Mississippi will vote. I'm not into politics, I make no claims to know what the candidate platforms really are, I sort of buried my head in the sand about that because I could and politics rarely interests me. I didn't watch the debates, because I don't really have much of an idea what's going on in this country, I only sort of have an idea of what's going on in Britain.
However, if I could vote it would be for Obama. And that's nothing to do with politics (well, actually it is a bit, I'm not completely out of the loop). It's really just because Romney is shaping up to be another George W. Bush, in that soon people will have posters on their walls with stupid Romney quotes. If you have little common sense outside of politics, I don't trust you to have common sense with politics. Sorry. And if you think aeroplane windows should open while 1000s of feet up in the air then I can already tell that you're not my man. This is not an uncommon opinion from a Brit, by the way. I'm sure there are Romney supporters, but I have not yet personally heard about one. I think he just generally offended us about the Olympics and we have never warmed to him since. Also, I can't support a man who doesn't support same-sex marriage. That's just so unbelievably backwards.
Living in Mississippi, Romney signage is everywhere. It's on people's front lawns, on their cars, and on the fraternities. I have tweets coming in from both sides, but mostly Mississippians are tweeting for Romney, and other northerners are mocking him endlessly (not hard to do). Our student newspaper, the Daily Mississipian, has been running stories for a long time about the election, and guess which side they tend to fall on. Remember that this is the only student newspaper (out of 64) who endorsed John McCain when he ran for President.
I have to say, I'm very surprised as to how open people are about who they're voting for. In Britain I don't feel that people are particularly outspoken about it, and certainly weren't when I was an undergraduate. I didn't see nearly as much around voting time on campus then as I have seen here. I have been in the presence of one debate between my friends about who they want to run the country, which didn't get heated, but it was certainly argumentative. Otherwise people seem to freely express who they are voting for, and luckily everyone seems to respect that. Despite not agreeing with how the majority of Mississippi will vote in this election (we are certainly not a swing state), I am very impressed with how they are treating each other.
Tonight I am watching the election live, and I'll be watching with some other Brits - no Americans. This wasn't a conscious choice, it just ended up that way, but I will be taking a keen interest in the floods of texts, tweets and facebook statuses as to how Americans are reacting. For this reason, I love social media. What I will be even more interested in, is the reaction once the President is announced, particularly in a State such as Mississippi. However, being on a college campus will certainly not be a clear representation of this, as a college campus is so diverse, with an increasing number of out of state students, and you find different thinkers on a college campus compared to your average American town.
But really, the important thing is for Americans to vote. I hope the number of voters have increased this year. This is such a major contest, even closer I think than the previous one, so it's more important than ever for everyone to have their say, and this can only happen through votes.
This has been a strange, out of character blog post, but this is potentially a monumental history making day, which will affect the arguably most powerful nation in the world for the next 4 years. Here are my two cents worth.
Good luck Obama, TTFN.
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