Confessions of an election junkie

My policy is not to discuss here what isn't primarily the business of this blog: pursuit of the aims and policies of the Democratic Alliance in Cape Town and in South Africa at large. So - no posts on the subject of the American presidential election. This post starts at that point because I wanted to enlarge on a subject that struck me as I followed the enthusiastic reportage of the American election.

It's this: all ye who enter here, abandon logic. I tried to remain restrained and disinterested, and found that the consequence of this led me early to the certain conclusion that Bush would win a second term.

Politically I think this is very troubling; but mostly troubling for America herself and for countries in the Middle East and a few scattered others such as Venezuela and North Korea. There may be political consequences for South Africa from a militarist USA, but they will probably be mixed consequences. For example, SA's economic fortunes will probably improve on the back of American economic decline - up to a point. It would be terrible for everybody if the USA's economy finally imploded; but their lesser misfortunes may provide the rest of the civilised world with opportunities to replace American outsourced jobs, and to provide ample resources to hedge against the declining dollar.

So Bush's victory, dispassionately viewed, can be something of a good thing for South Africa and other nations.

But of course, in the end, I caved. I wanted Kerry to win; I got caught up in the fever; I started reading Kos; I wrote a letter for the Guardian's Clark County Ohio campaign. Anyone who's fought in an election will know the feeling that I felt, that I always feel in our own South African elections: the fun and adrenaline and the sense that a tidal wave sweeps you up and carries you into victory, that nothin's gonna stop us now.

But the voters stopped the Kerry campaign in the end, just like the voters stopped DA hopes of a more decisive opposition mandate in 2004. The taste of defeat is more acidulous because of the emotional tide that made one fight in the first place. One becomes a victim, and accuses the other side of dirty tricks.

The experience of victory, though, is worth the risk of losing. The DA victory in the Cape Town council in 2000 vindicated the fever, and the desire to relish the pain of the losers is not only hard to resist, but it also amplifies one's own pleasure.

Such, I imagine, are the sensations of the Kerry and Bush campaigns. If anything, the aftermath polarises the parties yet more than the campaign does.

I could be pious and hope that the American parties and people will now reconcile and 'move forward'. But elections don't work that way, and this is as it ever is. Elections are emotionally transformative: cathartic for the winners, and inspiring of introspection and melancholy in the losers. From these transformations are built the next contest; fought over the same ground and invested with the same emotions, but with new issues and new faces.