A few hours out from Election Day, both candidates have made their closing arguments and all the cards appear to be on the table, so I don’t anticipate much more drama in the presidential race. The good news for Democrats is there is not a single poll that has McCain winning the election. Among Conservative opinion-leaders, the mood is subtly shifting from the desperate search for evidence that McCain’s steadily closing the gap, to self-consolation that he’s kept the race relatively close despite all his disadvantages.
I don’t think any remaining uncertain factors will be enough to undo Obama’s lead. That being said there is a feeling of anxiety among many Democratic activists right now that something could go terribly wrong on Tuesday. There’s not much evidence to support such fears, and that even if McCain winds up doing exceptionally well among undecided voters, he’s probably too far behind to close the deal.
I’d argue that aside from there well-earned Democratic pessimism based on past close elections, there might be two factors underpinning this anxiety. The first is obvious enough: race. With the McCain campaign heavily relying on submerged and not-so-submerged racial appeals, old fears about the willingness of white Americans to elect an African-American president have bubbled up.
The second factor is subtler: personal emotional investment in Obama. Democrats have long considered Obama a phenomenal, once-in-a-generation leader who can be “transformational;” others have reached this conclusion more recently. Still others simply think it’s imperative, that the Republican lock on the White House is terminated this year, for reasons ranging from Supreme Court appointments to foreign policy.
I wanted to understand why there was anxiety amongst the Democrat activists and one personal experience summed it up best for me – a teacher who goes by the name Ed (who is campaigning in Pennsylvania) said to me that he has only had a strong emotional, as opposed to professional or ideological, investment in the outcome of two presidential elections: 1992 and 2004. And those two Election Nights represented the ultimate highs and lows.
“Back in1992, I remember the joy I was feeling sitting in Atlanta’s premier political watering hole, Manuel’s Tavern, surrounded by members of a class I was teaching, as Georgia was called for Bill Clinton just two minutes after the polls closed. In 2004, the bad news came to me from a friend of mine who was working for John Kerry in Florida, and told me: “We’re done in Florida, and we’re done nationally,” finally dashing the illusions born of faulty exit polls.”
Many other Democrats have had similar experiences, more negative than positive, usually and many more were wrenched by the endless and ultimately maddening drama of 2000 than with the near miss of 2004. But virtually all of them seem transfixed by this year’s election, and what it might signify. That can produce anxiety, which will only be resolved when all the votes are in, and the Democrats have prevailed.
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