Countries Get The Leaders They Deserve

In 2004 it was said that the Republicans got Middle America to vote against their economic interests. Their reply was that there are more important things than money. This, I think, is unique to American politics. That political outcomes are determined by people voting for what is best for them individually.

This Federal election cycle, as we are all well aware, has been very long and unusual in the choices that have been presented, and in the audacity of the twists and turns. Not to mention so, so historic that one such as me, who, while being possessed of strong opinions, is not enough of a political pundit to give it proper justice.

And smack in the middle of it, we get a financial crisis that is so, so historic that rather suddenly America finds itself in a situation it hasn't found itself since--you know it's coming--the Great Depression. Which, like the Great War, looks like it will now become known as the First Great Depression.

The two are not unrelated. Those Middle Americans who voted in the party that believes in no regulation whatsoever (don't worry, they market is it's own regulator), are now at risk of losing the wealth they've acquired during the boom, the less well off of them are at risk of losing the homes they believed they were entitled to, and those among them who spent their lives saving for their golden retirement are at risk of losing much of their money, some of whom will need to go back to work to live until they die.

I honestly believe that Barack Obama will win this election. Personally, it means I can stop fucking apologising for the behaviour of my country and it's current administration to every non-American I meet. For America, it means that it can finally stop the reckless, 1% of the population enriching, Republican Contract with America that has so damaged the lives of many, many people in America and across this shiny blue sphere.

But even if, and at this point it's still an if, he wins, the numbers show America is still divided. As I write, The Guardian has Obama ahead by 7.3%, 49.8 to 42.5. So that leaves almost 43% of the 300 million people in America disatisified with their president.

Winston Churchill once said that Americans always do the right thing, but only after they've exhausted all the alternatives. Has America run out of alternatives yet, or are there alternatives we, the rest of the world, have to live through before Americans make the right decision?

Today, right now, from my window in Great Britain, it seems that Middle Americans need to lose their homes and be left out in the cold November rain for them to realise that they were wrong.