Here we go again! Voting irregularities, electors facing poll closures before they can mark their “X” and electronic machines short-circuiting due to rain storms. God Bless America, it makes you long for the hanging chad.
I love a bit of Pork Barrel. Does my rump look big in this?
Obama or McCain is the choice that faces the voters in the bankrupt superpower across the Atlantic and we Brits are seemingly more transfixed by this election than we are by our own first past the post madness.
It looks like it’s Obama, but the commentators are mindful of the Bradley effect, a reference to the 1982 election for the Governor of California whereby the black Candidate Tom Bradley went into the election with a 20 point lead and ended up losing by 100,000 votes. Apparently, when it came down to it, the public couldn’t vote for a coloured fella. Hmmm.
I love election nights – National Elections, local elections, by-elections (who can forget Newbury 1993), Presidential elections – I can’t get enough of ‘em. Election nights are like great sporting events infused with real drama played out by protagonists who put everything on the line backed by parties who do anything to win. I’m happy to confess that I taped a full eight hours of the 1997 British General Election, edited it down to a 90 minute highlights package and still regularly sit through the fall of Portillo and Mellor. There was more drama that night than a title decider at Interlagos.
So, what to drink on a night like this? It’s got to be California but my choices are limited by the outlets available to me after a busy day. I ended up getting the tube back to Kentish Town which gave me two real choices – Oddbins or Somerfield. The former was the first stop and wow, what a disastrous paucity of choice these guys are currently offering from North America. 6 wines, none of which I had any confidence in buying, so a sharp exit and quick right down the high street. Oddbins have new owners so lets pray to Bacchus that a return to roots is on its way – a modern wine tragedy.
We're Ravenswood - don't mess with us or we'll 'ave yer. And yer mates
Somerfield, on the other hand, stocks one of my bankers – the Ravenswood Vintners Blend Zinfandel, 2005. The Vintners Blend is full of fruit and from Sonoma California and is as dark as haunted wood and punches more than the 13.5% Alcohol on the label. If this bad boy isn’t carrying a full 14.5% I’d be amazed. And that’s the problem I’m currently having with this vineyard. They are currently marketing their portfolio as “not for wimps” with the website providing a helpful dictionary definition of the adjective.
This just doesn’t sit comfortably with me. It’s part of the “big reds” marketing approach that seems to wear “fullness” (read alcohol) as a badge of honour, a neo-con positioning of a once noble varietal. If this wine had a political mandate it would already be raining missiles on Iran. The truth is that these wines are better than that, and the Zinfandel being produced at this vineyard deserves more respect, the Lodi in particular.
I’m currently two glasses down with a strategy consisting of BBC coverage until 1.30am (full bottle consumed) followed by four hours kip and then a 5am alarm call for the final results.
Who do I want to win? Well for me the choice isn’t a choice at all. I cut my political cloth resenting the Thatcher era, rejoicing the emergence of the New Labour only to be disillusioned by the suffocation of the left wing alternative just as Capitalism begins to give up the ghost. If Blair taught us anything, he taught us that the message of change is the illusory concept designed to make us swallow the continuity of status quo. Obahma stands for change in a political system that just won’t tolerate it.
But hang on, I’m ignoring the elephant (or should it be pig?) in the room! Miss Palin, it’s time to go back to Alaska – VOTE OBAMA!
