Obama Defeats McCain!

In case you can’t remember anymore, here is something to give you an idea of how long this election cycle has been: When Barack Obama first announced he was running for President in February 2007, I had not yet been admitted to Harvard. And here I am on Election Day, a sophomore penning a headline that may yet turn out to be the “Dewey Defeats Truman” of our time.

That’s right, this election is not over yet. The polls might be predicting a good night for Democrats, but there have been a steady trickle of discomfiting articles over the last few weeks. There are rumors among African American early voters in Florida that their votes will never be counted, that early voting is but a scam to disenfranchise them. Around the country, new voters are being told that their registrations may not even be processed on time. And then there’s Ohio: The state uses more provisional ballots than any other. If you show up to a Buckeye State polling booth with a wrong ID you will be handed one of these ballots. Your vote will not be counted on Nov. 4, and the state Supreme Court will decide if it ever will be. Nothing would put a damper on an Obama victory party tonight more than the news that this whole election has anti-climaxed into a litigation war.

Nothing, that is, except for an outright McCain victory.

Here is my question to you, liberal Ivy League elites: What will you do if the Republican Party wins a third consecutive term? What will you do if you wake up tomorrow knowing that the mavericks are getting ready to take over? I have been posing this question in dining halls for weeks now, and not once have I received a dispassionate reply. Most involved some combination of suicide and moving to Canada.

But the one genuinely scary thing I’ve heard again and again is how this election could be “stolen again.” “Ohio,” “Florida,” and “registration inconsistencies” keep being whispered. And to paranoid liberals—the kind who hit refresh on the DailyKos homepage every few minutes—even the recent good news for Obama can jinx the election.

At some level, the Obama campaign sympathizes. They are promulgating a video urging supporters not to be complacent. The clip shows a cyclist in first place near the finish line. He raises his hands to celebrate as he enters the home stretch, loses his balance, and falls off his bike. Another cyclist cruises past him. In case you didn’t get the point, the campaign even places a photoshopped McCain head on the guy who ends up winning.

Providing that Obama can hold on, Harvard’s Republicans will need to do some soul-searching. I agree that McCain is no Bush, but George W. Bush was not a one-man show, and the real problem today lies with the entire American Right. What kind of campaign explicitly states that one part of the country is more American than the other? What kind of party lets incompetent Regent University cronies like Monica Goodling infiltrate the federal administration because they share a belief in the second coming of Christ? What kind of administration says they will reduce government, only to make government less transparent and more intrusive? And what other major political party anywhere makes abortion and guns more imporant issues than healthcare? The Republican Party must regroup and reconfigure itself in the next four years.

Unless you win, in which case I am worried for you. Because if my headline does become another “Dewey Defeats Truman,” the students in the dining halls threatening to kill themselves will probably get violent, ugly things could happen in the swing states tonight, and bitter Obamacans across the nation will leave America even more polarized at a time when the country desperately needs to stick together to pull through. And just for that, I see why politically mild Canada would seem so appealing.


Rajarshi Banerjee ’11 lives in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.