Every Marxist knows elections are a distraction from the real struggle, which is why I have refreshed this map forty-four times.
PORTLAND, Oregon – By ten in the evening I had been refreshing the same map for so long that my thumb had developed a small, dignified callus, and the quizmaster at the bar was starting to look at me the way a vicar looks at a man who has come in for the third time without a hymn book.
Round one: what is actually on the map
Here is what I can say with a straight face, and I have decided to say only that. Euronews’s live updates, maps and charts on the US midterm election results report that all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 Senate seats were up for election, and that votes continue to be counted across the country. That is the whole of what I am going to claim. I have friends who will tell you who has won, and friends who will tell you who is about to win, and one friend who has said “it is over” four times, and they are all in the same group chat, which has become a kind of Parliament in which nobody is allowed to speak out of turn but everyone does.
It is a strange thing to be a native North Londoner watching an American count. At home a result is a thing that happens at about three in the morning in a sports hall, and a man in a rosette reads it out, and it is over. Here the result is a rumour that travels west across the continent in a series of colours and then stops, waiting for a county I have never heard of to finish counting a stack of envelopes. Last week’s British council by-elections came with a single tidy results page listing six wards. This is a map with 435 pieces, and my phone has opinions about every one of them.
Round two: the canvassing hangover
The day began with a hangover, though not the kind you get from drink. It was a canvassing hangover: sore calves, a clipboard with an unexplained stain, and the unique shame of having knocked on a door three times because the building had two numbers eleven.
I phone-banked for three hours on Monday, in a borrowed office with a kettle that took nine minutes and a whiteboard that said “BE KIND” in a hand that had clearly given up. A man picked up and asked if I was selling something. I said no, I was a volunteer. He said that was worse. We talked for ten minutes about his fence.
I am not saying it was a waste. I am saying a Marxist who believes that elections are a managed spectacle of the bourgeois state and who nonetheless spends three days knocking on doors for one should expect a certain amount of gentle teasing from her own bookshelf.
Round three: the bar, the quiz and the hours between
The bar has a quiz on Thursdays, and tonight it was held under a television that nobody was allowed to turn on, by order of the quizmaster, a woman called Pippa who runs the room with the calm authority of a lighthouse. Our team is called Surplus Value. We came fourth out of five. The team that won had “No Politics” in the name and spent the evening on their phones, refreshing the same map.
- Question one: name a district. Everyone failed, including the man from the district.
- Question two: guess the percentage. Nobody has been allowed a percentage since the early evening.
- Question three: music. Surplus Value led, thanks to a woman called Rosalind who knows every bass line.
- Question four: capital cities. Somebody wrote “Birmingham” for both Alabama and England and was given the point.
I tried to be even-handed about the evening, which means I teased everyone. The left in the room insisted that a count is a process and the count would take as long as it took. The not-left in the room, who were also there and in some cases were at the same table, insisted the same, with the same pauses and the same sighs. Both sides were certain that the other side’s patience was a trick. Meanwhile Pippa asked everyone to stop talking in capital letters.
Round four: the economy of everyone
Somewhere between the second round and the fourth, a man at the bar showed me a headline on a farm.fm page, GOP says economy is booming, farmers ask which one. I only know the headline, and I shall not claim to know the content. But I did observe that everyone in the room had an economy of their own, and was prepared to defend it with a bar mat.
The delivery driver had one. The landlord’s cousin, who was sitting on a high stool for no reason anyone could explain, had one. I had one, and mine is a series of Thursday pantry shifts and a bus pass. If anyone is looking for the one true economy, I suggest they begin with the stool.
Walking home, still refreshing
I walked home in the usual drizzle, past a chip shop that is not a chip shop, thinking of the 29 bus and a good fish supper with salt that makes you wince. At the door I did the thing I swore I would not do, which was refresh the map. It said what it said, which is that votes continue to be counted.
I put the evening in my notes for Bohiney Magazine and saved a longer version for the London news column at The London Prat, where a count takes as long as the tea does. If you want more, the rest of my daily notes at The London Prat are there, with fewer maps.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
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Author: admin
