Black Americans may not riot per se, but they will probably believe that a man who shares their skin colour has been rejected by racists, by voters who told opinion pollsters they back Obama but couldn’t bring themselves to opt for his decidedly non-white name in the privacy of the balloting booth. Hardly a single black person of any stature in the United States is supporting McCain and their hopes have never been higher that historic wrongs may finally be redressed.
Many Americans say there’s another logic-defying reason Obama might lose: ballot-rigging. Yes, my friends, it does happen. In 1960, John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by several hundred thousand votes, most delivered by the crooked Democratic Party machine in Chicago. And many Democrats still believe that George W. Bush’s Republican Party stole the last two elections. The first was in 2000 with purges of black people—reliable Democrats—from voting lists in Florida. Then four years later, inexplicable voting machine glitches in the key state of Ohio largely seemed to hit Democrat-leaning students and, er blacks yet again. A senior editor with a leading American media outlet once told me his country has the politics of "the world’s largest banana republic". This election could either disprove or confirm the senior editor.