The Election

Posted at 9:30 PM, Tuesday, November 4, 2008

We had an all-American dinner of soy hot dogs smothered in chili and cheddar cheese and corn-on-the-cob to celebrate the election. It's already Tuesday evening here; polls are due to open on the east coast at 10:30 p.m. Adelaide time, and by my calculation we should have the first results before noon on Wednesday. Based on the sense of anticipation here in Australia, I can only imagine what it must be like in the U.S.

The Greek-Australian family who run the corner store asked me if I could vote. I explained for about the fifteenth time that I had already mailed off my absentee ballot and that I was fortunate enough to be voting in the swing state of Pennsylvania. An astonishingly large number of Australians know that Pennsylvania is a swing state, and they also know that Ohio, Virginia, and Florida are also considered crucial.

I went to Melbourne for two conferences--the Council of Progressive Rabbis for two days, followed by the four-day conference of the Union for Progressive Judaism. I spent a lot of time talking about Jewish issues. I spent almost as much time talking about the election. I'm not sure how many of the Australians were discussing it with each other, but as soon as they heard my accent, they dived right in.

Who are they supporting? Out of all the people I've talked with--and it must be in the hundreds by now--exactly two people have been in any way ambivalent. Every other person is hoping for an Obama win. My guess would be that if Australians were eligible to vote in the American election, Barack Obama would be elected by a margin of 95%. Even people who tell me they vote for the conservative Liberal party here in Australia are supporting Obama, generally for two reasons: they want to make a clean break from the Bush administration, and they find Senator Obama to be tremendously compelling.

My most touching conversation was with one of the attendees at the Union for Progressive Judaism conference. He shared with me that he has cleared out his entire schedule on Wednesday and is dedicating the day to watching the election returns. He fully expects to burst into tears should Senator Obama be proclaimed the victor. He told me how he left South African decades ago to escape apartheid. He could imagine no greater vindication than to see an African-American elected to the most powerful post in the world.

If it's election day, it must also be the Melbourne Cup. I attended the annual National Council of Jewish Women luncheon at the hilariously-tacky Fontana di Trevi restaurant, complete with fake Grecian statuary clustered around a little fountain. We talked a bit about horses, a bit about our lives, and a lot about the election. What will we talk about after tomorrow?