'We're taking it back'
A couple of minutes after my last posting, I looked up at the TV screeen and saw a crowd gathering outside the White House. I left my hotel and walked the five blocks to the most famous building in the world.
What began as a trickle on 15th Street became a flood by the time I arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was pelting down with rain, soaking the swelling crowd of thousands of joyous young Americans.
A young woman held a sign aloft. Its colours were running but the words were still legible: ‘Yes we did.’
At the centre of the crowd, pots and pans were being slammed together in celebration.
A chant of ‘Hey, Hey, Goodbye’ was hurled in the direction of the President’s house. If George W Bush was home he wasn’t getting any sleep.
A young man ran by me screaming, ‘We’re taking it back.’
Two Secret Service men were silhouetted on the roof of the White House. They didn’t need to worry. There was no threat in that crowd, only promise.
One or two young men looked a little tired and emotional. One shirtless young fella danced inside a semi-circle of elated black women.
The crowd was almost exclusively under-30. This was the Millennial generation on the march. One young woman wore a red T-shirt with an arrow pointing to her face and the slogan, ‘This is what democracy looks like’.
As Barack Obama was speaking in Chicago about the need for ‘a new spirit of patriotism and responsibility’, the crowd around the White House were chanting ‘USA, USA, USA’.
I spotted a couple of women in what looked like pyjamas. Another walked by in a tight red cocktail dress in unfeasibly tall high heels.
As I walked back towards my hotel, there was gridlock in the streets around the White House. The grey, misty early morning was alive with the sound of honking horns and screaming joy. As I write, just before 3 am, I can still hear those honking horns in the street outside.
Not even the most hardened cynic could be unmoved by the elation which animated that crowd this morning. But here is a thought: with sky-high expectations comes the risk of profound disappointment.
Obama will watch these spontaneous street-parties with humility and well-deserved pride. But he will also know he has a staggering debt to repay.
Posted at 09:01AM Nov 05, 2008
It's Over...
We have just come off air after our three and half hour Prime Time election marathon. In that perch, looking over a strangely quiet and serene White House, digesting the electoral drama across the United States, it was hard to process the history of what was happening.
But walking out of the studio, I heard the first car horns blaring in celebration, and passed the crowds of mainly young people cheering raucously on the streets of America’s capital. As a colleague said to me on the phone as I walked, ‘It has a touch of Italia 90’,
But the most poignant moment of the night was the sight of the bell boys and waiters gathered around the television in the lobby of our hotel. I stood with them for a moment and looked around at their smiles. They were all immigrants from Africa. I was reminded of what Obama once said: ‘Only in America is my story even possible.’
Forget margins of victory and ideology and the electoral college and all the machinery of this night. Just keep those immigrant Americans in your mind when you digest this result.
Posted at 05:13AM Nov 05, 2008
Six signposts
I’m sitting watching the traffic report on TV and they are saying Washington’s usual traffic mayhem hasn’t materialised today because everyone left home early to vote.
Watching those lines snaking out of polling booths this morning I am struck by the contrast with the first presidential election I covered.
Back in 1996, less than half of all Americans turned up at the polls. Today, I can only guess at the turnout figures but we may well see a modern record set today.
That’s my first signpost of the day. Watch the turnout figure. If it exceeds the modern record of 64% in 1964 we will have witnessed a democratic renewal of historic proportions – no matter who wins.
The second signpost
Pennsylvania. If John McCain win this state (which went Democrat in 2004) the Lazarus scenario is on the table. It would show working-class Democrats are deserting Obama and would make a McCain victory in all those toss-up states, like Ohio and Florida, a realistic possibility.
But remember, given Obama’s almost certain gains tonight in places like Iowa and New Mexico, McCain needs to win Pennsylvania and EVERY toss-up state to win the presidency.
A very tall order.
The third signpost
The popular vote. Because of the vagaries of the electoral college system, it is possible McCain could still win the presidency but lose the popular vote. It happened in 2000 but in the event of a McCain win, the gap between the popular and electoral college vote would likely be substantial. And that would a real source of tension.
The fourth signpost
Georgia. If Barack Obama wins Georgia this election will be a landslide of historic proportions for Obama. More than that, it will be a political realignment not seen since 1968.
The fifth signpost
Senate races. The Democrats have a real shot of winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That is a big deal. Top of the list of races we need to watch tonight are in Kentucky, Georgia, Minnesota and North Carolina
The Six signpost
The result. I’m afaid you are on your own there.
Posted at 03:24PM Nov 04, 2008
How Celine Dion destroyed Hillary
Howard Wolfson was Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson during her battle for the Democratic nomination.
You have to see his piece in the New York Times this morning.
Posted at 03:20PM Nov 04, 2008
And the winner is…You Tube
I know as election day dawns, I should be making flamboyant predictions about the outcome in Indiana or the Senate race in Minnesota but permit me a last light moment before the madness descends on us.
The Politico website has put together the viral video highlights of the campaign.
My personal favourite is number 4.
Sublime.
Posted at 10:43AM Nov 04, 2008
Obama praying for rain?
I’ve been saying for the past week that early voting will be remembered as a critical factor in this election. After visiting North Carolina, I am convinced of that.
That state is too close to call in the polls but when you look at the numbers who have already voted – more than four of ten registered voters - you see good news for Obama.
In fact, as the following story from North Carolina’s biggest newspaper reveals, the outcome of the battle in the state could come down to the weather. If rain discourages people from turning out then John McCain will be in trouble.
But one caveat to all this good news for Obama: he doesn’t seem to be attracting the wave of increased youth support that many people (including myself, I have to say) had been predicting, at least not in early voting. Numbers are up a little, but not by the levels of other groups like African-Americans or Latinos.
Perhaps the young voter is waiting for the last moment to turn out. That’s what Obama’s people have got to be hoping.
For more on the US Election go to RTE.ie/uselection
Posted at 10:38AM Nov 04, 2008
Nazareth
But when he rises
to the pulpit of the Nazareth First Missionary Baptist Church he is filled with
a staggering dynamism.
And they know he
got there because of the bravery of people like Charles Moseley.
Posted at 11:23AM Nov 03, 2008
Blue dog democrat
The sunset brings a chill to Marshall’s Main street. We’re in the foothills of Smoky Mountains here, just a gentle hour from North Carolina’s border with Tennessee. The night comes quick, but not quick enough that hordes of exotically dressed youngsters and their parents can’t make the rounds of shops and business offering Halloween treats along the sidewalk.
At the tail end of town is the Marshall Depot, the older generation’s Friday night hideaway. Here just about everybody with a guitar gets a chance to perform on stage in front of a greying but discerning home-town audience. There is dancing as well, the old Mountain shuffling which bears more than a passing resemblance to Irish step-dancing.
A 60-something-year-old woman with a powder blue pantsuit and a bouffant hairdo, perfected and primped over decades, dances elegantly beside as a slightly younger man with a camouflaged cap and t-shirt who does a more extravagant, chicken-style shuffle.
There are perhaps 80 or 90 similarly dressed older people in the hall and a couple of old Marshall characters out in the lobby.
Adolphus Threadway tells me the Depot used to be the town train station. His great- great-granddaddy sold the first ticket back in 1868 and his father sold the last in 1968.
Adolphus and his friends are warm and forthcoming on almost all topics, but seem more formal talking about politics.
Adolphus voted early early. He is a Democrat, a Blue-Dog Democrat, like most people in the surrounding Madison county. He is conservative, pro-gun and pro-family and pro-America. A Mountain Democrat. But still a Democrat.
Adolphus voted for John McCain.
So did Emmet Norton. Another Democrat.
And so did Bonnie Keech.
Against the sound of the regional anthem, ‘Rocky Top’, all these fine, decent mountaion people told me in a variety of ways that Barack Obama did not share their ‘values’.
Values. That word can represent a multitude of emotions and perhaps cover up another multitude.
These people told me Obama’s skin-colour was not a factor in their decision. Instead, what I heard was a resentment of his foreign-ness, his un-Americanism, his difference.
Bonnie Keech told me Iraq was a real factor in Madison County. And it was playing in favour of John McCain, not Barack Obama, because the war underlined McCain’s patriotism.
Still, even Republicans at the Marshall Depot believe that Obama has a chance of winning North Carolina. Frank Massey is one. Sitting on a bench by the ticket desk, with his hands resting on his walking stick, he rails against the Democrats, who he says are responsible for his state’s historic lack of developmentt`:‘We didn’t even get electricity in this county ‘til 1948’.
When I ask him about the election, he leans forward and says of Obama and Sarah Palin: ‘I think the negro’s going to win, but we’ll have a woman president four years later.’
For more on the US Election go to RTÉ.ie/uselection
Posted at 03:23PM Nov 02, 2008
Barack TV
You may have seen the Barack Obama infomercial that aired here on Wednesday night. If not it is well worth checking out.
As I watched the opening frames I was immediately reminded on Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America advert from the 1984 campaign.
Obama clearly starts out trying to grab the mantle of Reagan-esque optimism but he also taps into the tremendous doubt that defines this election.
The stories he chooses reflect that prevailing insecurity about the strength of the American dream. I thought the example of Larry and Juanita Stuart in Sardinia, Ohio, was particularly effective.
The most telling line of all came from a struggling Ford worker from Kentucky called
Mark, who said ‘We are going to lose America as we once known it.’
In that one line is the story of this election: an historic clash between America’s innate faith in the perfectibility of their lives and the crippling doubt about the future of their shared civic dream.
The fascinating thing is how Obama seems to channel the crisis of confidence which shapes the public mood through his own life-story
Talking about his father, he says, he was ‘shaped more by his absence than his presence’.
The infomercial was compelling in parts, reassuring in the way it presented Obama (as a man you could imagine being president.). But I thought there were flaws exposed here as well.
There is still something detached, formulaic, about the way Obama interacts with people. He comes across as perhaps a little too anxious to turn the problems of the real-people he meets into parables.
For more on the US Election go to RTE.ie/uselection
Posted at 04:00PM Nov 01, 2008
Godless Americans
I’m leaving for the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina where we’ll be reporting on the presidential race. But I’m keeping an eye on the fascinating Senate race there between Democrat Kay Hagan and Republican Elizabeth Dole.
Dole is trailing a few points and seems to have pulled out the biggest gun of all: God.
Take a look at her big advert.
Posted at 08:00AM Nov 01, 2008
Early voting
To follow up my earlier post about early voting in Palm Beach County, take a look at the New York Times coverage of the issue
I particularly like the photo.
I think the explosion in early voting is going to turn out to be one of those landmark developments that history will associate with this election (among with obvious ones like race).
Posted at 06:29PM Oct 31, 2008
Leave me alone
For months now, I’ve been getting intimate messages from Barack and Michelle. Back in January, in Iowa, I registered for information from the Obama Campaign to keep track of events but I never expected such persistent warmth and personal attention. Every day they are on looking for money, like some wayward relative.
This is the message I got from Michelle last night:
Mark -
I know this campaign has asked a lot of you.
But in the next 5 days, Barack will need you more than ever before.
I was tempted to write back and tell Michelle that she needn’t have bothered. Her husband had been on to me the night before.
This is what he wrote.
Mark -
The next 6 days are going to be the toughest we've seen, and I need your support to reach as many voters as possible.
This campaign is in your hands.
Thank you for everything you're doing,
Barack
If this keeps up I will have to look for a barring order.
For more on the US election go to RTE.ie/uselection
Posted at 12:24PM Oct 31, 2008
Palm Beach all over again
I’ve had a few days to consider lessons from a visit to the Palm Beach centre of election in Florida.
I went down to find out whether there’s any chance of a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco, when Palm Beach was the epicentre of a world-changing recount.
But there was another story waiting for me.
There was a queue of early voters wrapped around the Elections Office all the way to the Exxon station. And the polling station wasn’t due to open for another half and hour.
The election official we came to interview told me the average wait for a voter was two and a half hours.
Florida allows people to cast ballots early, positively encourages it. In Palm Beach, they expect a record number, as many as 100,000 people, to vote early. With almost a week to go, early voting in 2008 has already outstripped the overall total for 2004.
This appears to be good news for Obama.
(and this YouTube video from Gallup might tell you why)
By my rough estimate, more than half of the people in that line were African-American, including a rowdy but good natured group of kids from the Palm Beach Lakes High School. Their teacher kept them amused as they waited by holding a curbside quiz on the history of the American presidency. With each correct answer she handed out a bag of sweets.
Further up in the line was a woman with a small child called Sean and a t-shirt that read ‘Got Hope’ with the words Barack Obama beneath it. This was her third try at early voting.
There were young men in military uniforms, immigrants, retirees, Hispanics, chino clad white men: the melting pot in single file.
In the ten or so random interviews I did in that line, just one man declared his intent to vote for John McCain. Everyone else repeated a variation of the same two words: change and Obama.
This is an unscientific survey (in a lower income part of Palm Beach) but it tells you the potential for Obama that comes with a huge early turnout.
By the way, as to my original question, could there be chaos on election day in Palm Beach. The answer is ‘hell yes!’
First, there is a new voting system which had a serious glitch in a recent local election.
And high turnout is also part of the the problem. The official forecast is that 80-90% of eligible voters will turn out in Palm Beach. That is 700,000 people. And even when you take into account early and absentee ballots, about 500,000 people are expected to show up on election day.
That means, for the anoraks among you, no early exit polls from Florida. Polling stations will likely stay open well beyond the official closing time of 7 pm (midnight Irish time) and that means we probably won’t hear a result from Florida until the early hours of Wednesday morning.
It also means plenty of potential mischief for the thousands of lawyers who are due in Palm Beach on election night to monitor the results.
For more on the US election go to RTE.ie/uselection
Posted at 12:16PM Oct 31, 2008
Back to Kissimmee
There’s a touch of Groundhog Day in the air tonight. I’m back at the Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, site of the Silver Spurs arena where I saw Sarah Palin last Sunday.
Tonight, the Barack Show has come to town. And Bill Clinton is tagging along. They have had to move out of the arena and into the surrounding park to accommodate the expected crowds.
As we pull off Route 192 into the park, I spy a sign beside Watson Realty. ‘Stop in for a Free List of Foreclosures’.
For my money, that single sign explains the strength of Barack Obama’s campaign as much as anything I will witness tonight.
A movement not a campaign
It is easy to take things for granted as a reporter but there are moments like these, on a chilly, dark Florida night when you are reminded that you are witnessing a moment in history, whatever the outcome next Tuesday.
Here in Kissimmee, I am sitting in the midst of a remarkable outpouring of humanity. The queues outside the security perimeter go on for miles.
Inside, the young and old, black and white, male and female, are running towards the intimate central cordon where Obama and Clinton will speak in a few hours. The wide expanse of green field beyond that cordon will soon fill with tens of thousands of Americans, no longer supporters of a campaign but members of a movement.
Out there across America, there is doubt and fear and distrust of Obama among those who stand to lose from change. But here there is nothing but certainty and celebration. A profound sense of ownership of the future.
Within spitting distance of Disney World, they are living out a dream, but not yet a reality.
Not another beautiful day
Sometimes you hear a song you love so much you end up hating it. After hearing U2’s Beautiful Day for the sixth time tonight I will probably never willingly listen to it again.
The actor
Jimmy Smits is on stage. He played the dream presidential candidate, Matt Santos, in the West Wing.
Tonight he is warm-up man for a president and a potential president.
‘Disney World: where dreams come true.’ He says, ‘My dreams are going to come true next week’
Disney don’t do presidential elections but if they did …
The arrival
Obama’s not the president, at least not yet, but he has a presidential-scale motorcade. He arrives shortly after 11pm with a detachment of at least 50 outriders.
The introduction from the podium is short and to the point: ‘The 42nd president and the next president.’
Clinton and Obama come to the stage, they grasp hands and hold them aloft.
Clinton’s speech is a well-argued endorsement of Obama’s leadership qualities, but it is not the warmest or most personal speech he has ever made.
When Obama takes over, he returns the compliment, lauding Clinton’s achievements. 
Obama has clearly learned from the older man’s ability to express complex and essentially centrist economic arguments in a folksy, populist style.
But the best parts of his speech tonight are his responses to attacks from John McCain.
The McCain Campaign has used the word socialism to describe Obama’s attitude to wealth.
‘They found evidence that I shared my toys when I was in school,’ Obama jokes, ‘That I split my peanut butter sandwich and gave half to a friend.’
Clinton rocks with wild laughter beside him.
Obama cites the bible to justify his economic outlook, a smart move in any American political speech.
‘The bible tells me that I am my brother’s keeper.’
I am struck by the difference between this populist Obama of the common man and the professorial, earnest almost smug candidate I saw back in the snowy wilds of Iowa back in January.
As we reach the midnight hour, Obama wraps up with a warning against over-confidence.
‘I don’t believe for a moment what I see in the polls,’ he says. ‘Power concedes nothing without a fight’.
And then as he walks away from the podium a song blares from the loudspeakers: ‘Signed, sealed and delivered’ by Stevie Wonder.
No one seems bothered by the irony. This is not a night for irony.
For more on the US Election go to RTÉ.ie/uselection
Posted at 10:57AM Oct 30, 2008
