Schlagwort-Archive: US Presidential election

Allgemein, media, Political Theory, US Politics, USA

A hopeful, heartbroken man.

Today America votes.

In many ways, it may be a more consequential vote than before. A day before the polls open, in the quiet before the storm, Ezra Klein asked Jon Stewart to talk about the last twenty years of US media, politics, and not least, some fundamental ideas about the nature of humans and how it was, and is, affected by all of this. I was a little disappointed that Stewart didn’t pick up on Klein’s initial lead about the new epistemological structure of the left-right division, but I suppose he was right not to. If you watch the video all the way, you’ll understand why.

Let’s hope we’ll be more hopeful than heartbroken tomorrow night.

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politics, US Politics

America Votes. I Watch.

No live blogging tonight, as I’ll be attending an election night party organised by the American studies department at Johannes-Gutenberg Universität. My personal guess is that Obama will win, but not by a margin as big as predicted lately. In the end, I suppose John McCain will be happy it’s over and he’ll once again be allowed to speak freely. After all, he’s a bit of a tragic figure whose campaign demonstrated that someone who, in a long political career, has made a lot of bold choices, has to fight more to keep his part of the electorate together than to reach out to the marginal voters. And he was continually fighting against the sitting President.

I’m happy that it seems likely Senator Obama will be the next President. But I would have liked to see a better campaign, one that would have not only pitted “the same” against “change” but actually defined those concepts with a little more detail. It’s now up to the next President elect to do that.

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oddly enough, US Politics

Now go and play with your “Joe The Plumber” action figure.

From The Times, via Crooked Timber, a first class example of real life political satire.

The Republicans have made a last-minute attempt to prevent Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House by trying to recruit an Oxford academic to “prove” that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a former terrorist.

With two days before the election, Obama is poised to become America’s first black president, according to polls showing he has an average six-point lead over John McCain, his Republican opponent.

Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases.

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