Capstone Conversation 1-2008 Election

I went to the capstone conversation on thursday october 23rd. It was a guest speaker talking about the impact of the 2008 election. He also discussed his predictions and support for those predictions. The speaker actually took a while to arrive and delayed the start by about twenty minutes but in that time Dr. Spurrier held a discussion mostly towards the audiences participation in the election. As to no surprise to me the room was very seperated as to who was supporting and ultimately voting for who. That wasn't surprising for a couple reasons. For one people at USC come from all over so you can expect different views and sides but at the same time it shows how close and seperated this election will be. Once the speaker arrived he gave background information about how the election works in terms of the electoral college, voting methods and times, and significant past elections. He then discussed some of the main views for each Obama and McCain and discussed how each could win. Up until this point I thought it was impressive how he was only informational and didn't take any sides or biased towards either candidate. But once he expressed his prediction that changed. He was in support of Obama and believed Obama would win the electoral vote in a landslide of 340-169 which I thought was highly unlikely. I believe even if Obama won most of the independent votes that the traditional republican-democrat state vote would make it closer than that. However, he supported his prediction and it possibly could happen but I still disagree that that will happen. Coming out of this conversation I can say my information about the set up of the election was refreshed and I got a very good perspective of each candidate. I enjoyed this conversation even though I generally don't like the topic of politics and elections. But I do recognize this year is incredibly important and is the first election I can vote in so I decided to attend this conversation for those reasons.