President Obama – a surprise?

At our company, TomorrowToday, we track trends and try and make informed predictions about the future of work.  Recently, my colleague, Keith Coats, was traveling through the USA and was asked what “the world” thought about the elections.  His answer was that most international observers were surprised and concerned that Senator Obama was not predicted to win by a landslide.  That there was even a thought that another Republican, especially a war-mongering one who was trying to win by appealing to very conservative parts of “middle America”, even had a chance was a scary thought.

Of course, one of the issues is that America has not yet dealt with its racial history.  Even this morning, as Barack Obama’s landslide is now a reality, it is clear that he won less votes in the Southern States than any of the previous five Democractic candidates for President have done.  But that is another thought for another day.

This post is just to say: well done President-elect Obama!  Bring on the change.

Its also to say: we told you so.  I hope this doesn’t sound like many of the TV “political analysts” currently flooding the 24-hour news channels and sounding as if the results were assured.  But, its not easy being a futurist.  By the time you need your invoice paid, the future is not yet assured.  By the time your predictions come true, people have forgotten you made them.  So, unfortunately, we do have to sometimes say, “we told you so” just to remind people that we did actually spot the trends and call it correctly.

Those who know our work will know that even before Obama beat Clinton for the Democratic nomination, I was predicting a landslide win for Barack Obama.  Part of this prediction relied on the desire for change evidenced in all major democracies in recent months.  Part of the prediction relied on the fact that we have predicting some form of economic correction for some time (I wish we had been able to predict the timing and severity of the current downturn), part of it was that if and when the debate turned from international issues (America’s euphemism for foreign military interventions) to national issues (euphemism for America’s economy and self-interested self-interests), and another part was the impact of the generations (age) of each of the candidates on the voters, and a final piece of the puzzle was the new “Generation Y” voters who came out to campaign and vote in record numbers.

Obama by a landslide.  Not a surprise to us.  But certainly a relief that it is now reality.  America – the ever changing, ever adapting nation – is once again forever changed.

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