NK Sreedhar is back in action with a timely post on the US elections which has gained a surprising amount of attention in India as well. Please encourage him with your comments. – Sukumar

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Just in case you didn’t get to see / hear the news in the past few months, it’s election year in the US. Hema and I are going to be voting for the first time and we are very excited. One of the best aspects of the US political process is the debates – where the average voter gets to see where the candidates stand and how they articulate their thoughts and ideas. We love the debates. In fact, we debate for hours together after watching the debates.

It’s no wonder then that after watching the VP debate, our conversation turned to Ms. Barracuda (Governor Palin for the rest of you elites). As recent poll numbers are showing, Gov. Palin’s support amongst women is dwindling and most women are starting to say that they wouldn’t vote for her. On the other hand, when we were sitting in the hall for oath taking, there was an African American to the right and left of me. Both of them have been in the country for over 30 years and this was the first time they wanted to become citizens, so they get the chance to put one of their own in the White House. In fact, analysts are predicting that there will be extraordinary turnouts of African Americans at the polls come November 2nd.

For the first time in the US history, an African American has the chance to become the president or a woman has the chance to become the Vice President. I wanted to understand why African Americans are feeling the maternal instinct of protecting one of their own, but, women are not feeling that same instinct in protecting Gov. Palin. No two segments of people have been more tortured, oppressed, denied their rights and treated as slaves than an African American or women. Yet, women who have been oppressed and sidelined since the hunter-gatherer days still won’t support one of their own, if only to elevate their collective condition, but an African American would and does. I find that very intriguing. Of course, I am over simplifying things by leaving out lot of nuances, but, you get the general idea.

I ask every one of the women that tells me they wouldn’t vote for Governor Palin, including my wife, why they wouldn’t. Most tell me that they are unable to identify themselves with the Governor and they can’t understand what she’s saying most of the times. Of course, their opinion of her collectively changed after the now infamous interviews that Governor Palin gave. The answer gets complicated when I ask them if they’d support her if she was eloquent and thoughtful and empathetic. Most of them are unable to point out why they wouldn’t support her even at that point.

Forget for a moment that a President and VP have nearly 3000 people to support them through key every day decisions and wouldn’t have to be great orators themselves – think of George W. Bush. Of all the virtues he had, public speaking wasn’t one of them. It can’t be that we value communication and inter-personal skills so high that it trumps our instincts to protect our own? If so, how did the independent women vote for W. Is gender instinct not as strong and clear-cut as racial instinct?

No matter which way we lean, at least at the outset, it looks as though women are able to overcome their gender-bias and no matter what gender you are, racial bias is much more difficult to overcome. What do you think?