Can Lebanese Jews actually vote like any other Lebanese citizen?

As a New York State citizen, is there any way my vote will help reelect Obama? If not, will it help his administration in some other way?

• NOTE: if you're not an Obama supporter, please take this as a general question about voting. You can imagine the question is about Romney in a state that always votes Republican. I am a resident of New York state, which is almost certainly going to vote for Obama. Due to the electoral-college system, my state will vote for him whether I do likewise, abstain from voting, or vote against him. I know that if I talk about how I'm going to vote, my words might affect friends of mine, maybe prompting them to vote, too. But for the sake of this question, let's say I don't discuss it at all. I am only interest in the what I can achieve (or not) by pulling a lever in a voting booth. Yes, if everyone in my state was apathetic, no one would vote. But everyone won't be apathetic. For the sake of this question, I am uninterested in answers like "By voting, you're participating in a democratic process" or "People gave their lives so you could vote!" I only want to know ... (1) Given the realities in my state, can my vote make any difference to Obama's chance of gaining a second term? (2) If not, will it help him some other way? Will his administration have more power or money depending on how many people vote for him, even if those votes don't change the outcome of the election?

• Answer:

  If Obama loses New York, it wouldn't have mattered if you voted for him. To lose New York he'd have to lose many, many other states first. However, you should vote anyway. If he does win a second term, the popular vote will matter. The wider the margin, the more people will accept him. That's a fuzzy notion, but the fact is that most politics is fuzzy. We focus on the simple bright-line of who wins an election, but that's not where the real work gets done. The real work is a vast array of horse-trading, popularity, and influence-peddling. When he brokers deals, his popularity matters, and the last general election's results influence that. Consider it this way: George W. Bush had absolutely nothing to work with in his first term. He'd lost the popular vote, regardless of the merits of the Supreme Court decision. (This would have been clearer had it not been for 9/11 and the subsequent wars.) Conceivably, Obama could find himself in the same position if you don't vote. Or the inverse: if the popular vote margin is large in his favor, it will send a significant message that the big-money tactics being used against him don't work. So every vote really does count.