Afraid to Rep the Underdog?

As a college student at a very liberal university where protests and boycotts are part of everyday life, it is obvious which U.S. Presidential candidate is the favorite here at New York University.  Everywhere you look, people are sporting their blue donkey t-shirts covered with OBAMA ’08 pins. As a fellow Obama supporter, it really is a great feeling to know that if I happen to have a chat with a random person in one of my classes about the election, 9 out of 10 times they’ll be checking the same box as I will be on November 4^th.

But what about that 1 person (out of 10) that will NOT be voting for Obama? The other day I was having a chat with my friend Ammar who is here as an international student, and I was curious to know what his thoughts were about all this election buzz that was surrounding him. To begin, he told me that if he were to vote, he would vote Obama. Nice. But he also mentioned that when he asked his American friends who they were voting for, he noticed that people’s responses were either a definite “Obama” or “I’m not sure yet” – and he made an interesting assumption that those who did not give a real answer were most likely McCain supporters that just did not want to admit it. And to back up his assumption, he added that one of the people who had responded with “I’m not sure yet” later was seen with a mini McCain/Palin pin on their backpack. The more I thought about it, the more I realized his assumption wasn’t necessarily far fetched – in a place where the “College Republicans” student organization is, well, not the most popular student club on campus, I guess I can see it being a little hard to be a McCain supporter.  Last semester, Barack Obama actually came here and had a rally at Washington Square Park with thousands of supporters flooding the streets and blocking traffic everywhere.  But regardless of how the majority feels, shouldn’t one not be afraid of admitting who they’re voting for?  Whatever happened to being proud of repping the underdog? Sure he might not win, but if you think in your heart he’s good enough to be PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, don’t you think you should be proud of it? Just a thought.