Magdalen’s Obama-rama

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Magdalen JCR held a countdown party for the 2012 US Presidential Election. This however was not the kind of party that goes on until 5am in a good way. With a budget of £500, voted for by the people, for the people, there was booze and snacks to nourish the people, who spent the night crouched around a television.

The party had lots of facebook enthusiasm and when it kicked off at 9pm, stocked for the night ahead, the rolling news was our oyster. An hour and a half later the food had gone. The JCR forked out for pizzas, Doritos, cake, Coors Light, Kronenbourg and coca-cola, but also recommended BYOB for those that only give 270+ commitment to partying.

These (sort of) Americana were served in the surroundings of stars, stripes, a large beanie-baby and red plastic cups (blue ones were conspicuously absent). As with most university events that offer free food many unbelievers were there to eat, drink and leave. But a few die-hards wore flags as capes. The BBC coverage didn’t start until 23.35 GMT, so the viewers settled for “Fox Extra”. This was inaudible over the sagacious musings of every recently anointed expert in American politics. CNN had predicted that 55% of Mothers supported Obama, and that was exactly the sort of statistic echoed by Oxford’s temporary oracles to back up their directionless arguments in the queue for Hall last week. Someone did provide a refreshing response to the coverage, as he sang “Free health-care for everybody, vooooooote, for Obama” to the tune of the Macarena.

More pizza was planned for 1am but the party had emptied out. Phrases like “We’ll win Ohio” were badly judged by anybody who wasn’t an actual American. Magdalen has an exchange programme with Stanford USA, so there were indeed actual Americans there to see our shame.

Even less enjoyable are the pseudo pundits that are deliberately contentious. A discussion before election night with a young, socially liberal, moderate Conservative Brit, saw them defend Romney’s stance on abortion by switching tack to say it shouldn’t be a federal issue. Election fever symptoms include selective-contrariness.

The actual count-down element of the event was oddly manifested. The remaining few chanted the 10-9-8…3-2-1 sequence as the polls closed as opposed to being actually counted across America. With no results yet, the predictions were cheered and booed. Using this method, Obama was re-elected by the BBC website days ago.