Netwerk

29 oktober 2008 — A republican friend - and in this partisan town friends of the ‘other persuasion’ are hard to come by - just gave me his prediction for next Tuesday: “A blowout of epic proportions.” But I’m too nervous to be quite that sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer and extremely confident that Sen. Obama will be our next President, but I’m thinking the polls and some of the repeat shenanigans of 2000 could deem this race a bit too close for “epic proportions.”

Turn on any network station now and you’ll see whole rally speeches broadcast in entirety—that’s just one of the many firsts of this election campaign. Another first is how “normal” people, meaning those not working in politics and who live outside the epicenters, are citing polls and discussing what used to be insider strategies. Check out a few of these now-mainstream sites: Real Clear Politics or Pollster.

The other fascinating first is how Barack - err…I mean his campaign - texts me (SMS I think you say) all the time. Early on in the primaries many of his early supporters signed up to receive texts advising us of his upcoming interviews or the location of his next rally. The media has been enraptured with the first-ever texting nominee storyline ever since.

What remains to be seen is how many people will actually vote. Will this election be a repeat of the shenanigans that went on in Florida in 2000? Consider these stats:

305 million people in the United States 213 million eligible to vote But in 2004, roughly 60 percent of those eligible voted - there were 120 million votes cast. Keep in mind 13 million of those have been purged in 2008 from the potential “red to blue” states U.S. voter turnout is 139th internationally, well below The Netherlands.

The real question to me is do the times make the leader or does the leader make the times? In this election, the fact America is a laughingstock internationally due to the isolationistic world view of President Bush; the never-ending wars he started in Iraq and Afghanistan; the crashing of the global economy; the general unease related to future of everyday Americans point to the feeling the times make the leader.

If you want to live like the rest of us political junkies do in the States and if you care about who is running and is elected down to the state districts, there’s a ton of layman prediction sites out there as well. Here are a few I’ve found interesting:

Roll Call Politico Beliefnet Read more about Cecelia Prewett, the Vice President, Strategic Communications for the American Association for Justice and a blogger for Netwerk.