'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
