ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL

Barack Obama won. If you listened to the pundits, this was a toss-up. But the (reputable) statisticians were always saying that Obama was a strong favourite to win the electoral college comfortably, albeit with a reduced majority of the popular vote (see statistician Nate Silver’s brilliant FiveThirtyEightblog, which has called the last few elections almost perfectly).

What was interesting to me was how badly the world (including SVG) wanted Obama to win, while America itself was deeply divided and highly ambivalent. The BBC did a poll, and apparently every country in the world except Pakistan was overwhelmingly pro-Obama (If I were Pakistani, suffering under increasingly indiscriminate American drone strikes that have killed innocent civilians and even friendly soldiers, my vote wouldn’t be so sure either).

If Facebook and rumshop conversations are anything to go by, SVG’s own support for Obama must’ve been somewhere close to 90%. And the positively giddy local press coverage of Obama’s win was more effusive and comprehensive than anything they put together for the ULP’s 2010 General Elections win. In fact, the average Vincy seemed more in tune with American electoral politics than our own.

Another reason to burn your cable box.

But back to the SVG’s rabid Obama support. It was hilarious to hear some pro-Obama Vincies convincingly explain away the USA’s economic woes with great nuance and precision (he inherited it from Bush! At least he’s doing better than Europe! It’s a global crisis, everywhere is suffering! His policies avoided a deeper crisis! Those ignorant Republicans are blaming him for things he did not create, but they have no credible alternative plan!). Many of those same Vincies, however, refuse to extend the same logic and flexibility to SVG’s economic difficulties. In SVG, economic hardship is to be blamed on Ralph’s idiotic policies. Our wounds are all self-inflicted. Barack, on the other hand, is a victim, expertly playing the shitty hand that fate dealt him. The schizophrenia of some Vincentians – sounding like dyed-in-the-wool democrats while discussing Barack, but adopting Romney’s playbook to attack Ralph – was jarring.

The lesson, as always, is that all politics is local. Vincentians were prepared to counsel patience and display a stunning collective grasp of international macroeconomics in the USA context because, well, the realities of the American depression weren’t directly affecting us. The whole world would’ve voted for Obama. Only problem is, the whole world wasn’t losing their job in Michigan, or agonising about their health care in Florida. The whole world wasn’t worrying about federal income tax increases, factory closures, auto bailouts or their property values in Ohio and Nevada.

For the people who did have those direct worries, the election was quite a bit closer than our voyeuristic, long-distance analysis of the election.

As Bob Marley said: Who feels it, knows it, Lord.

Another couple points on the USA election. Did you notice that Obama’s final margin of victory in the popular vote (50.6% to 47.8%) was almost identical to the ULP’s 2010 election result (51.6% to 48.1%)? I leave you to make your own insights from that lil’ tidbit.

Finally, I’ve heard a few Vincy pundits decrying American’s archaic weighted voting system (the Electoral College) as undemocratic. The pros and cons of the system are always debated each election cycle.

But here at home, where is the outrage about SVG’s undemocratic weighted voted system? As I never tire of pointing out, the voters of East St. George and South Leeward are being unconstitutionally disenfranchised because it takes more of their votes to elect a representative than any other seats in the country. In fact, Linton Lewis’ and David Browne’s losing vote totals in those constituencies would’ve comfortably won them seats in six other constituencies.

On the other hand, the Grenadines simply do not have enough residents to justify having two seats. Votes in those constituencies are irrationally (and unconstitutionally) over-weighted. Terrance Ollivere’s winning total of 1,112 votes in the Southern Grenadines would have been the second-lowest LOSING vote total on the mainland (only Kenroy Johnson – the NDP’s sacrificial lamb in Gonsalves’ constituency – got less votes on St. Vincent than Ollivere WON with in the Southern Grenadines).

Before you worry about understanding America’s electoral college, wrap your mind around this fact: 4,995 people voted to elect one representative in South Leeward (winning total: 2,593). Meanwhile, a mere 1,757 voters managed to choose their rep in the Sothern Grenadines (winning total 1,112). If everyone who voted in the Southern Grenadines voted for the same candidate, that total would've gotten them 35% of the vote in South Leeward (obviously, they would've lost). Each vote in South Leeward was worth one third of the value of a Southern Grenadines vote.

How long are we gonna let that continue?