Election Day Jitters

So far today, I've gotten 2 calls from fellow American expats who like me, are about to plotz waiting for Election results.

My Kakamega buddy Bryan called first to wish me a happy Election Day. You remember? The guy who almost presided over my massive coronary during a hellish hike in the Nandi Hills. He'll be attending an all night election watch party at the Kakamega Country club in Western Kenya. I bet that whole side of the country will explode in a mighty roar if/when Obama is declared the winner.

My buddy Jeff called a few minutes later. He and his wife Meredith live here in Nairobi, and like me, they're finding it hard to concentrate on much of anything today. Jeff sounded so excited but also completely stressed out that I had to take a few minutes to calm him down.

Come to think of it, I was calming myself down just as much.

It's probably obvious that, like me, both guys are Obama supporters. But the
most interesting thing about those two calls is that Bryan is 26, and Jeff is
28. That means Bryan was 18 in 2000, and Jeff was 20. Now, I'm not trying to be patronizing here by saying these guys were too young to understand what it was like going through the aftermath of the 2000 elections. My memories of that time are of utter heartbreak, mixed with impotent outrage that something like that could happen in America.

I'm sure that's part of what's making Bryan and Jeff so nervous today. But what I find most intriguing is that I truly don't think they can relate to my level of angst about the "race wildcard" on this historic Election Day. Bryan is white and Jeff is biracial, and as young Americans who came of age during the hip hop era, they are blissfully free of the kinds of racial memories that are making me slightly nauseous right now.

Put bluntly, and as I've written before, I KNOW what fear and paranoia could do to some white undecided American voters who feel their way of life is being threatened. I'm still worried that a significant number of those people could walk into the voting booth today, take a deep breath and cast a vote that essentially says, "This is my last chance to hold the line for America as a primarily white Christian nation."

And there wouldn't necessarily be anything against Obama in a vote like that. Also, there might probably be very little in support of McCain in a vote like that. There'd just be a sense that the power and the status of being a white American is slipping away, and that thought might make more than a few people feel uneasy. In an atmosphere of intense financial and political uncertainly, THOSE people might just conclude that a vote for the status quo would send a deeper message, that somebody's got to stick their finger in the dike......

Do I sound totally paranoid here??? I certainly hope I'm just straight trippin' about this. But talking to Jeff and Bryan this morning, I felt really happy that these two young men had no deep experiential scars to tend to during this Election Day.