Blog: 1992

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I was talking to The Dimple In My Chad about the US Elections at lunchtime - i was getting Very Nervously Optimistic about the whole thing, and she said, quite rightly, "Remember 1992!"

For the Younger Types amongst you, this was when everyone thought Labour were going to win the election, or, more pertinently, that the Tories were going to lose it. The fact that everyone got so OPTIMISTIC about it and then were so very upset when things turned out the other way is one of the reasons for the mass outporing of JOY in 1997 when it finally happened, and is also, I guess, one of the reasons so many of us have CONVINCED ourselves that Bush is going to win. You can tell me about record turnouts and young voters, you can TANTALISE me with that Green Bay Packers victory thing, or you can say "Margins Of Error" until you are red white and blue in the face, but I won't believe it until John Kerry's been in office for a YEAR. I mean, even in 1992, John Major's BROTHER (aah! John Major's brother! how we remember thee!) wasn't in charge of the count in a whole batch of margin constituencies...

I really hope Kerry wins though. I grew up in SLAVISH AWE to America - whether it be the America of the TELLY, America of FILMS, or, especially, and specifically, the MANHATTAN of Marvel Comics, anything American was UNUTTERABLY COOL to me. In my ADULTHOOD this has continued whenever I've met Americans, especially Americans in BANDS - man oh man, if George Bush had employed The New Bad Things to sell me the story of Weapons Of Mass Destruction THEN i would have believed him, what a CHARMING bunch of people they were! Also, of course, the very IDEAL of America is a wonderful thing, and I am one of the millions who sit and watch the West Wing thinking "God bless AMERICA!", briefly forgetting where I'm actually from. So yes, I really hope that tomorrow (or even next week) we can look at America again and say, without reservation, "Wow! You're COOL!"

Which, with the best will in the world, you could never really say about Neil Kinnock.

posted 2/11/2004 by MJ Hibbett

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