My wife's hospital floor (she's a nurse midwife) is staffed by doctors and nurses from all over the world. Politics comes up quite a bit, at least in election season. One Nigerian nurse, whenever my wife expressed anxiety about Obama, would always respond, "Cindy, don't worry. God will take care of him."
As election day hurtled toward us, this nurse told Cindy, "At 10 o'clock on Tuesday, you will be drinking champagne." Not strictly true, since at 10 that night Cindy was attending a birth (with a woman who pumped her fist and shouted "Obama!" between contractions). And the forecast was of course off by about 75 minutes. But about as good as Nate Silver, no?
As for me, this "God will take care of him" mantra was relayed to me repeatedly. I did envy this lady her faith.
Actually the forecast was off by only 16 minutes. It just took an additional 90 minutes or so after that for Karl Rove and Donald Trump and the rest of them to come to grips with defeat, before Romney made a rather tardy call of concession to Chicago.
ReplyDeleteAnd you could tell Romney (or anyone on his staff) really didn't prepare for the loss. Half a minute into Romney's speech I set the over/under at 4 minutes. For all his arse-hattery during and after the election, one thing you have to give McCain credit for was an elegant and gracious concession speech.