Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

Orchard Road has been unusually quiet for the past month or so, thanks to the global financial crisis. Nothing exciting in this part of the world except for Singaporeans getting charged for wearing kangaroo T-shirts and Australian journalists having their drug trafficking charges dropped. We all know how things work around here, so let’s not get ourselves into trouble by answering the “whys”.

At this very moment, I’m monitoring the US Presidential Elections online and something interesting is happening. In spite of pre-election polls showing Obama having a decisive lead over McCain, the election results show a close fight. I thought we’re going to see the whole map of American covered in blue, but at this moment, I see quite a bit of red patches around Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama …

More interesting results are revealed in the voter’s profile. The majority of men support McCain. The majority of women voters support Obama. Apparently, Sarah Palin didn’t do it for McCain. The Democrat’s portrayal of John McCain as a playboy who dumped his disfigured wife for a much younger woman yielded the expected results. The majority of younger voters support Obama (not surprising), but just as we go into the 30-44 group, a very significant majority of voters support McCain. Let’s not get into the “whys” here as well.

As it stands, Obama seems to have only a 1% margin of victory. It has been speculated that the electoral votes may work against him, but judging from the results, Obama has a far stronger lead in terms of electoral votes than percentage of total votes cast. It’ll probably be an Obama victory after all, but what is going to happen after the elections, knowing that the first Black president only has a very slim majority in terms of popular votes? Will we see daily demonstrations? Will we see a biased media continuing to sling mud at the president until he resigns?

Some economists have predicted that neither man will be able to turn the American economy around. A further downturn is imminent and Obama may be blamed for it if he assumes presidency at the wrong time. Well, someone still has to do the job. I hope Obama can just hang in there till the economic storm blows over.