First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

Dixie—has the whistling era passed?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing—but, having spent most of the last fortnight in Georgia, I wasn’t surprised that the state failed to deliver the violent Democratic swing some had been hoping for. With 96 per cent of precincts reporting, it stands at 53/46.3 to McCain—a significant shift from 2004’s 58/41.4 victory for Bush, but far from a return to Clinton’s 43.5/42.9 victory in 1992.

Although I visited both Savannah and Atlanta—both of which have voted overwhelmingly Democrat—I spent most of the time in the rural north, largely in Fannin county, a beautiful, densely-wooded region on the southern tip of the Appalachians. Fannin, like the counties around it, and like most of Georgia’s vast heartland, is overwhelmingly white: 97.9 per cent in the 2000 census. It is also overwhelmingly Republican. 7,799 citizens voted for McCain, against Obama’s 2,606; a shift to the right since 2004, when the vote fell 6,862/2,727 between Bush and Kerry.

While I was there, I don’t think I spoke to a single person who thought McCain was going to win. All the talk was of Obama’s presidency; but the word “hope” wasn’t being used very much. The mood was variously wry, resigned, disenchanted and bewildered. After two solid years of electioneering, and two solid months of economic gloom, faith in government was at a low ebb. Political change of some kind was clearly coming, but it seemed to be trailing in the wake of other, darker changes—in the economy at home; in the security of the nation and its interests abroad.

If there was a consensus, it was that Obama would be elected—and then assassinated. This was an opinion repeated so often it had taken on the status of a fact for some. Among younger people, theories were expounded and elaborated with morbid delight. A few days before voting, I ran into four guys in their 20s and 30s in the town of Blue Ridge, talking gleefully among themselves:

-McCain, he’s an idiot. Saying “I’m gonna be President.” He don’t have a chance, he’s gonna lose.

-Obama, what he needs isn’t votes, it’s a vest [thumping his chest] to stop the bullets.

-He needs full armour.

-He needs the Popemobile, that’s what he needs.

-He should talk to Robert Downey Junior, see if he’s still got that iron man suit.

-Of course, they’ll make it look like a black man did it. Or it’ll be civil war. Black versus white.

-There are people out there who are going to kill him.

-In this day and age, it’s a terrible shame.

-Aren’t so many of us old white folks now, and it’s probably a good thing. We had our chance and we blew it. This is a mixed nation, it’s overdue for a a change. Obama will win.

Incantations and conspiracies are part of every election. But in this one they have come into their own. America is awash with its hopes and fears. For those in the UK wondering how 47.7 per cent of those who voted could have decided not to endorse Obama, it’s worth recalling the depths of the feelings that soak the land. It was almost invisible, at least on camera, but Obama gave his speech of acceptance in Chicago flanked by screens of bullet-proof glass two-and-a-half inches thick.