Obama? Oh boy!

The fight for democracy is on, or rather the pretense of such a battle. Back home you’ve got the John and Barack drama and here in Thailand we’ve got the anti-democracy People’s Alliance for Democracy locked in an epic struggle for unrepresentative control of the Land of Smiles. But let us shelve the Thai situation for a moment and focus on the presidential campaign in the land of milk and honey.

This past week saw the Democratic National Convention come and go, the finale involving an acclimated Barrack Obama wooing 80,000 people who were already going to vote for him. Word on the street was that a group of Americans here in Bangkok were replaying Obama’s acceptance speech at a restaurant on Friday night and all Americans near and far were invited to watch.

As soon as class was out we rushed home, unloaded our backpacks packed with homework, and set our sights on Roadhouse Barbecue, the location of the event. After a quick 2 hour cab ride into Bangkok in which we lost our seats and missed the first 20 minutes of the speech, we had made it. The next half hour was spent listening to Obama charm his supporters and woo the world with the crowd in the bar filling in his pauses with the appropriate applause and whooping and hollering.

A brief digression is necessary at this point. The organizing group behind this affair? Democrats Abroad. Yeah, that’s right, Democrats Abroad. Talk about redundant. The only Republican bastions outside the US can be found in Iraq and Afghanistan. So if you organize meetings concerning the US presidential campaign outside the US and you’re not in Kandahar or the Green Zone, there’s about a 110% chance that it will be a predominantly Democratic gathering.

So after the speech was over, the back-patting complete, the self-congratulations exhausted, and customary 8-year old trotted out as an example of "what is at stake in this election", what was left? Well, the same group that entered. Now I'm all for the democratic process and I signed up for my absentee ballot like a number of other people there, but I'm realistic as well. The most important part is my token action of sending in my vote and partcipating in our country's democratic process. I have no illusions that my vote will ever be counted, especially in North Carolina, but that's not the point. The point is that it still counts.

So that's what I took away from the evening. Well, that and the fact that two hour taxi rides with 6 people in one cab are about as enjoyable as getting your wisdom teeth out. Hell, if anyone deserved a pat on the back that night it was our haggard group stumbling into the restaurant a half hour late. Then again, the bleu cheese cheeseburger I had to end the night was reward enough.