Any advice? “Telling people not to give into their anxiety makes it worse,” Dr. Friedman said. “I tell them to communicate. It’s pointless to tell people not to worry.”
The Obamaphiles are particularly concerned with the Bradley effect—so named for Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial race after leading in the polls—which New Yorkers now invoke repeatedly when confronted with good news about Mr. Obama’s current position. Maybe it’s shorthand for the inscrutable predilections of those who dwell in the dark fields of the Republic due west; or perhaps it just indicates an unwillingness to jinx anything. (Many Obama supporters also hopefully suggest a sexy-sounding “reverse Bradley”: that some Midwesterners may tell their friends and neighbors they would never vote for Obama, but then pull the lever for him in the privacy of the voting booth.)
Conspiracy theorists abound. “If the vote is legitimate, I think Obama is a shoo-in,” said B. C. Ashmall-Liversidge, a redheaded mother of four sipping a glass of white wine at Rudy’s. But dangling chads still flutter pell-mell in her psyche. “I don’t expect the election to be run legitimately and I know a lot of paranoid people who think the same way I do. It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he has it in the bag,’ but you can never say that.’”
‘PSYCHOLOGICAL FIRE INSURANCE’
Some New Yorkers, like Upper West Sider Ari Wallach, 33, are taking a positive approach to coping with election fears. “I basically did the reasonable thing anyone would do, which was quit my high-paying corporate media job and start a political action committee in a room the size of my mother’s pantry, and have groveled for money and votes ever since,” Mr. Wallach said, referring to jewsvote.org, an organization he started to help wrangle the Jewish vote (most famous for a “Great Shlep” to Florida shilled by the comedian Sarah Silverman). Not that this activism has entirely assuaged his anxiety; he and his wife recently instituted a No BlackBerry rule at the dinner table to ward off interruptions from election-related Google Alerts.
Arthur Fournier, a 34-year-old Chinatown resident who works in the marketing department of a publishing house in Soho, said he started volunteering for the Obama campaign earlier this year as a means of “psychological fire insurance.”
“If the Democrats lose the election again, at least I won’t be lying awake at night thinking, ‘Shit! I could have done my part. I could have made a difference,’” he said.
But not everyone has the time or motivation to make a weekend trip to Philadelphia or start their own political action committee. Besides, watching the presidential race unfold from the sidelines is kind of … exciting.
We can obsess over polling numbers and electoral college projections instead of thinking about what happens afterward, should our team not win. We swathe ourselves in statistics, collected and manipulated to project any number of potential outcomes. (Indeed, the creator of FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver, previously invented an algorithm for predicting baseball wins.) In this way, loyalties become amplified. Presidential debates and sports alike are watched in the company of friends with plenty of beer and shouting involved. And even when your home team is ahead, you don’t want them merely to win—you want them to blow the other team out of the
“I keep looking at the polls not because I expect McCain to come back and win,” said Chris Sharp, a 29-year-old Brooklyn resident, die-hard sports fan (basketball, football and baseball, primarily) and obsessive checker of a special iPhone application that lets one peck at poll numbers while waiting on line at Starbucks. “I look at it to know that the lead is continuing to grow.”
And if it evaporates? We’ll get drunk, and we’ll wake up to Sarah Palin in the White House.
“It becomes increasingly anxiety-inducing and surreal as we get closer, because one has to imagine what it’d be like one way or the other, and really start to think about it as a serious proposition instead of the weird game it was before,” said Mr. Luxembourg.
Which is why a few ardent Obama fans are consciously trying to stay above the fray. “I absolutely care a lot about this election, and I’ve given to candidates, but I think I can care and not be caught up in the day-to-day,” said Brooklynite Alex Farbstein, 24, boyfriend of Mr. Williams. “He always turns on Keith Olbermann, and the fact is we’re very civil about it; I ask to change the channel.” Mr. Farbstein said that most political coverage “is all about sound bites and Joe the Plumber,” and not helpful anyway. (“We may do something separately,” he added, of the couple’s election-night plans. “Remains to be seen.”)
“I just watch the news in the morning before I go to work,” said rookie Manhattanite Amy Hecht, 22, breezily. She was leaning against a table in the courtyard behind Rudy’s after stumbling upon the Living Liberally event while getting an after-work drink with a girlfriend. “Two weeks ago, it was bothering me a lot more. I was talking about it more.” And now? “I feel like people are kind of already getting over it. They’re like, Obama’s going to win.”
“Most of my friends don’t want to talk about politics,” said Jennifer Mason, 25, a blond resident of Chelsea in a pink blouse and dangly silver earrings who was standing nearby with a cocktail. “We’re all on the same side, so there’s not a lot to talk about.”
Ms. Mason still watches The Daily Show every morning, DVRed from the night before. But she ignores the polls. “You get to the point where you’re like, ‘I don’t want to think about it, I know who I’m voting for.’ You just put your head down and hope for the best, because otherwise it’s going to drive you nuts.”
mbryan@observer.com, jpompeo@observer.com
