Dan's daily desktop - Olivia Wilde

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Finally, after 42 years of campaigning, the US goes to the polls today. Well, most of the people who are going to vote go to the polls today. In many areas polling has been going on for weeks.

Being a political junkie, I intend to stay up all night watching the copious election coverage on offer from BBC News, Sky News, CNN and Fox. I'll give ITV a miss... When I say 'stay up all night', that means I'll probably get as far as 2am before falling asleep. It used to be that I could literally stay awake until dawn, but those days have gone. Sigh.

Anyway, here's hoping that I'm awake to hear that John McCain has called Barack Obama and conceded defeat. The polls indicate that after all the campaigning it will be a straightforward victory for Obama. I suspect it will be a little tighter, but not enough to cause any concerns.

I still find it baffling that just under half of those who vote are predicted to vote for McCain. He seems like a nice enough guy, if a little prone to tetchiness, but he seems to have poor judgement. The choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate gave him a temporary poll boost, but then she opened her mouth and proved herself to be an imbecile. Then there's the debacle of the economic crisis when he 'suspended' his campaign to return to Washington and ended up doing jack shit. There he was in a meeting with President Bush, the treasury secretary, Federal Reserve chairman, Obama and others and he didn't say a thing, proving his own admission that he knows nothing about economics.

His campaign has been a mess too. While Obama has remained largely positive, focusing on the issues that matter, most notably the economy. The McCain campaign, lacking convincing policies in this field has resorted to trying to portray Obama as a friend of terrorists, a socialist and even a supporter of infanticide. All of this is clearly nonsense to anyone with any sense and when viewed alongside McCain's poll ratings, has clearly been entirely ineffectual.

The truth is that McCain is yeaterday's man. Despite all his assertions that he's a maverick, he's intractably linked to the Bush era at a time when the majority of Americans want to turn their back on it. Barack Obama represents a fresh start for America and, in many ways, the entire world. While we will all wake up tomorrow with the same problems, G-d willing the election of Barack Obama will make the future seem just that little bit brighter.



Today's birthday shout-outs:

Walter Cronkite, US news broadcaster, 92
Loretta Swit, actress, 71
Laura Bush, First Lady of the US, 62
Nigel Worthington, Northern Ireland football manager, 47
Malandra Burrows, actress, 43
Sean 'Diddy' Combs, musician and entrepreneur, 39
Matthew McConaughey, actor, 39
Mario Melchiot, footballer, 32

"What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living." - Doug Larson