The Arkansas Project

‘Irrational Exuberance’ for Obama

By Dan Greenberg - October 22, 2008 12:07 pm

Don’t get me wrong: I think early voting is wonderful. It’s just that it’s a little less wonderful when everyone else thinks it’s wonderful, and it’s even a little less wonderful than that when it takes over an hour to vote (early!) at the Thompson Library – which was, comparatively, a ghost town during the primaries. The wait approached two hours at some Pulaski County polling places, with our county’s elections director calling the heavy voter turnout “huge” and “unprecedented.”

Why is turnout so heavy this year? Well, life in the 21st century is riddled with mysterious popular enthusiasms. First we had the dot-com bubble, then we had the housing bubble. Right now, in my opinion, we have an “Obama bubble,” in which sellers think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for $12,500 in exchange for a signed first edition of the Illinois senator’s autobiography.

I am confident that the Obama phenomenon — like all speculative bubbles — will come to an unceremonious end. As a Republican, though, I do think it’s too bad that right now, just when voters are taking to the polls, seems to be the time that the Democratic nominee is hitting his peak.

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