Swing states

Instead of talking about books at my bookclub this week, the conversation revolved around the US presidential election. The Americans in the group, all seven of them, are staunch Barack Obama supporters. Not one could find a kind word to say about John McCain, let alone Sarah Palin. Their friends back in the US were all going to vote for Obama, too, they claimed.

And yet... nobody was confident that Obama would be the next president. They all remembered 2000 all too well, when, as Sarah Silverman, an award-winning Jewish comedienne, so eloquently put it, "Al Gore got fucked by Florida".

This time round, people are less worried about the voting machines or pregnant chads. But they're still worried about Florida. A lot of elderly Jewish people live there and, even though many of them call themselves Democrats, some seem reluctant to vote for an African-American, CNN has reported.

The Jewish Council for Education and Research has funded a new initiative called The Great Schlep (Schlep meaning "long, tiring journey" in Yiddish) to stop Florida from spoiling Obama's chances at the presidency. With the help of Sarah Silverman, they tried to encourage young Jewish people to visit their elderly relatives last weekend, which was a public holiday in the US, to swing the Florida vote in Obama's favour. Silverman emphasizes the similarities between young black men and old Jewish women in the video. Some of them are rather tenuous. "Tracksuits," she laughs. "They both love tracksuits."

The video ends with Silverman telling Obama supporters to threaten their grandparents with something that will hurt them most. She said to warn them that they won't get any more visits this year if they don't vote for the Democratic party in the presidential election on 4 November. The video is funny — but the language is explicit. We'll never know if it will help swing the election for Obama — or McCain.

I've chosen "swing" as this week's Wise Word, as I think we'll be hearing it a lot over the next three weeks.

Wise Word: swing

In a compound noun: "swing vote"
This means a vote that has a direct influence on the result of an election.

• "Obama seems to be going for the geek swing vote — he's appeared in a video game!"

In a compound noun: "swing voter"
This is a person who has no strong feelings for either party and who can still be persuaded to vote one way or another.

• "Hispanics are the swing voters in New Mexico and Nevada."

In a compound noun: "swing states"
These are the states that could be won by the Democratic or the Republican party. They could swing either way.

• "Both candidates are concentrating their campaigns on the swing states."

As a verb: "swing"

This means to bring about a particular result.

• "Elderly voters could swing the election in favour of Obama"

And in business, if you can "swing something" or "swing a deal" you can make it happen.

• "I might be able to swing something for you."

• "We managed to swing a deal with the company."

What could you swing?