McCain gets Georgia (of course). And maybe Macedonia. Slovakia is relatively close, but leaning Obama. And, well, that's about it. At last tally, of the 9,875 available global electoral votes (195 participating nations, including the U.S.), Obama has 8,482.
McCain has 16.
It is not even a contest. It is not a question. The world sentiment is so devastatingly in favor of the calm, stable, intellectual Harvard-trained senator over the cantankerous Bush-loving war hawk that, well, it can only make you wonder.
Is the planet simply turning into one giant blue state, more tolerant and fluid and less combative overall, more eager to work together to solve the myriad problems facing humanity, as opposed to fracturing off into bitter, fear-promoting rogue nations? Or was the world leaning that way already, and we've had these blinders on for so long we forgot how to see it?
Or maybe the conservative political parties in these nations, the ones you'd expect to support McCain's style of isolationist, military-first governance, have become just as splintered and out-of-touch as our own, and therefore can't muster enough unity to cast a vote for a fellow old-school war hawk?
Or is it merely because all those educated international readers of The Economist -- not to mention all the other international newspapers of note, nearly all of whom see Obama as a historic, positive step, a true world-changer -- are really just a bunch of namby-pamby gay-loving tofu heads who should put down the pot pipe and pick up a Bible and a gun?
Wait: Perhaps it's something even more frightening and nefarious. Maybe the world wants Obama simply because they see him as weak and conciliatory, as easy prey, and so of course the perverted, terrorist-choked world wants him, because then they can more easily bomb our cities and steal our women and drink our oil and force us to marry gay people and enjoy universal health care and drive girly little hybrid Eurocars to the soccer game.
Whoops. Channeling Rush Limbaugh for a horrible second there. Sorry.
I realize, at first glance, this entire question might be just ridiculously lopsided, a bit loaded, sort of like asking the world if they would like another presidential term for, say, Iran's Ahmadinejad, an extremist demagogue widely ignored and scoffed at by his own citizenry, but who makes headlines by catering to his militant, fundamentalist base. Hmm. How oddly familiar that sounds.
