Election Fever reaches Boiling Point

I have been granted the fortune to be in the United States during an election year. As a citizen of the world, we get to see, from the outside in, the United States go through its 4-yearly epileptic fit known as the election for the POTUS (President of the United States). I remember being in Australia staring numbly at the TV screen gamely trying to remeber the names of the 50 states. Now I've almost got all the States memorized, their names associated with bits of political trivia (No republican pres has won without Ohio). From within, you can see the full treatment, the constant buzzing of the commentary, from talkshows to newsshows to newspapers.

Of course, USA is a b-i-g country, and where you are will determine what you see. Here, in San Francisco, one of the two poles of American liberalism (the other being that pit of sin - NYC), one gets a skewed view. Most folks around here are self-identified liberals, and people seem acutely embarassed by their POTUS. Most are politically blinkered and believe that Kerry will definitely win because they can't understand how anyone could vote for Bush. Others are defeatist simply by extrapolating from the target audience of American TV programming.

Just today, we had an impromptu politics discussion, where someone volunteers the information that although Dad and sis will vote for Bush, he and his mother will counteract that with votes for Kerry. Unfortunately, with the subtelties of the electoral college, votes in the solid blue Democratic chunk of California will make little difference. It could very well come down to the Jewish retirees and blacks of Florida, or the steel workers of Ohio.