Eighty-eight months ago, we were told that everything had changed forever in America - and nothing would ever be the same. We were at war. There was a new sense of national purpose, of shared responsibility. We'd all have to adjust to new security measures. It was the death of irony.
Well, nothing lasts forever. I never bought the death of irony – it was resurrected within days. President Bush frittered away the world’s good will and America’s collective willingness to sacrifice. Our national dialogue became even more partisan and mean-spirited than before. The economy collapsed – just as the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001 intended.
The security measures remain, of course. I dutifully removed my shoes and coat this morning on my way home from covering the inauguration. I pulled my laptop from its cozy corduroy sheath. I padded through the metal detector in my socks. A sign announced that the TSA is exploring “Whole Body Technology” that could soon let us keep our clothes on at the airport (I thought “Whole Body Technology” was what helps me pick out the right sunscreen at Whole Foods).
Now, once again, everything has changed. Everything is different. For how long this time?
Like many of the million or two who crammed onto the frozen grounds of the National Mall, I am filled with hope. But mine is the hope that the American people won’t give up too quickly on their new president. A CBS News-New York Times poll on the eve of the inauguration found many Americans willing to wait for positive results from Barack Obama. They recognize that the United States has enormous problems, and the consensus in the survey was that it might take two years for Mr. Obama to get the creaking, leaking ship of state back on course.
But in a month, or two, or three, when President Obama’s First 100 Days have been televised, scrutinized and digitized, when the chattering class has picked apart the ins and outs and ups and downs and nits and bits of every presidential stumble and hiccup – and unemployment is still rising, and the stock market is still sputtering (or worse), and the troops are still in Iraq – how quickly will that patience wane?
The public has a short memory. It also has a short attention span. And it famously keeps its presidents on a very short leash. George Herbert Walker Bush went from a record 91% approval rating in the spring of 1991 – to summarily drummed out of office 18 months later. His son went from an approval rating in the same neighborhood after 9/11…to Tuesday’s ignominious departure, taken away by helicopter as tens of thousands below hooted and waved bye-bye to the most unpopular, and many would say the worst, president in American history.
You may say I’m a cynic. No - I’m as idealistic and romantic as any soul on this earth. I just also believe in pragmatic realism, and I come by it honestly. I have been a student of history and politics for more than 40 years, and it just doesn’t pay to burden a fellow human being with impossibly unrealistic expectations. Never forget that Barack Hussein Obama is just a man. He’s an uncommonly disciplined man, a very smart man, who is thoughtful and eloquent, not to mention handsome and tall, which never hurts when it comes to self-confidence and the ability to persuade others. But it is a rare soul who can fairly bear the burden of others’ dreams. Every generation or so, an extraordinary individual transcends our natural limitations: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela. But even among those, only Mandela lived to see his people enjoy the freedoms he helped them achieve.
Someday, perhaps Mr. Obama’s name will fall naturally at the end of that line. Most of us hope so. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t; he said on the radio this morning that he hopes President Obama fails, because he disagrees with his policies. At the moment, thankfully, he is an exception.
For some, Mr. Obama has already delivered. Janet Jones Kern drove from Farmington Hills, Michigan all the way to Washington to see Mr. Obama sworn in. She is white. In 1971, she gave birth to a biracial daughter. She was a single mom, raising a half-black child alone in the Midwest.
“I always felt alone,” she told me. “I endured a lot of hard times, a lot of pain and bias.” She eventually married a black man. Her daughter married, too, and had children of her own.
“But I always felt that the playing field wasn’t exactly level, and that I brought them all into a tough world. I just always felt this nagging doubt, that there was a deficit for my children and grandchildren. Now I feel validated. My little five-year-old granddaughter can look me in the eye and say, ‘Grandma, I’m going to grow up and become President of the United States of America.’ And for the first time,” she told me, in the cold shadow of the Washington Monument, “it’s really true! I just feel joyous. I don’t feel like I’m alone anymore, I feel like the whole world is with me.”
She didn’t have a ticket. She got nowhere close to the West Front of the Capitol. But, she said, “I’m just thrilled to breathe the same air as this man. I know it’s going to be long and hard and tough” for him to turn the country around – but for her, the difference is already real, and in her case, it will last forever.
The difference is already there for Nancy Pelosi, too. I’ve interviewed the Speaker of the House three times in the past ten days, the last time yesterday in her Capitol office. From her windows, we could see the presidential podium, the scaffolds, the chairs waiting to be taken down after the proceedings of the day before. We looked out along the empty Mall, to the Washington Monument and beyond, where so many people had shivered and cheered and cried 24 hours earlier. For Speaker Pelosi, the change has already come.
“I just can’t stop smiling. It’s an incredible thing!” She beamed at me. “No one knows better than I how important it was that we make this change. President Bush’s presidency wasn’t just one of missed opportunities,” she said, “but of making matters worse. Whether it’s the war in Iraq, the economy, the budget, the environment – you name it. He took us backward. When that helicopter went up yesterday,” referring to the Marine chopper that carried the Bushes away from the Capitol, “I thought – bye bye!”
And here she waved at the sky. “It’s like a ten-ton anvil being lifted from my chest.”
And did she feel even a single pang of pity for President Bush, as he sat on that stage listening to the new president trash the Bush policies? Uh…no.
“I don’t have to be concerned about what President Bush is thinking anymore. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on it. I don’t feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for the one in six children in America who are living in poverty. I feel sorry for the people who have lost their jobs because of the economic downturn. President Bush? Goodbye!”
The change is also real for the African-American security officer who helped me find the Speaker’s office, after I got lost in the maze that is our Capitol. As he was walking me to the proper elevator, he suddenly started giggling.
“I know, “ I said sheepishly, “I’m an idiot. I went to the Senate side by mistake.”
“No, it’s not that,” he said with a smile.
What then?
“My president is a black man.”
And with a giddy guffaw, he pushed the elevator button and sent me on my way.
President Obama is already on his way, signing Executive Orders to close Guantanamo Bay, make sure American interrogators don’t torture terror suspects and freeze the pay of White House staffers. In the next few days, he’ll sign more, reversing Bush policies on abortion, ethics, maybe on gays in the military. These are things he can do with the stroke of a pen. Would that resuscitating the economy and ending two wars were that easy. Simple principle and belief aren’t enough to create jobs and restore lost wealth. For those who have placed perhaps too much faith in him, who have turned Barack Obama into a vessel for all their national aspirations, the wait for things to truly be different may take a little longer. They may end up disappointed when he can’t be everything they thought he was. Perhaps they should temper their hopes with a dash of reality, lest they be dashed completely if he fails to live up to those lofty expectations.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Diary of an Inauguration
I know, you want to know all about last night's Huffington Post bash. Was that really only last night? Seems so long ago already...
But how can I blog about a silly, celebrity-soaked party after what we witnessed today? I think I'll make the HuffPo report tomorrow's postscript to this adventure. For now, I offer instead this blow-by-blow of today's incredible proceedings:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2009
(as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States)
1:45am: Glad I only had one vodka martini at the party, I finally get to bed, just a few short hours before it's time to cover the swearing-in of a new American president.
4:00am: Fifteen minutes before the alarm is supposed to go off, I get up, awakened by sirens and the sounds of police setting up barricades outside my hotel. Yes, I have only slept two hours and 15 minutes, and fitfully at that.
4:49am: I leave the hotel, stepping out into a police zone. The cops have blocked the front door of my hotel. I am forced to exit through the service entrance on a side street, weaving through the hotel kitchen on a route that reminds me too much of Robert F. Kennedy's last moments.
5:02am: Lugging two heavy bags of broadcasting gear, I board the Metro, bound for the Capitol. Luckily, the surging crowd is getting off at my station, not on, so the train isn't that crowded. Most of this pre-dawn throng is heading for the National Mall, not the Capitol itself.
5:22am: I exit the train and stroll up to the Capitol grounds. Hey, this is going great! Empty train, no delays, smooth sailing. I have been told by the Secret Service that I must be on site between 4 and 6am, for screening of all my equipment and to get in place on the Capitol's West Front. It is 22 degrees.
5:23am: Uh-oh. Everything grinds to a halt. I join the longest security line I have ever seen. It's mostly media, mixed with a large group of military medical personnel in camouflage. The queue snakes out the security trailer, down Capitol Hill, around a bend...it's at least two blocks long. Everyone is stunned.
6:28am: One hour and five minutes later, it's finally my turn to go through the magnetometers. The temperature has dropped to 20 degrees. We have all been shivering in the pre-dawn cold. Photographers mostly, from Time, Reuters, Agence France-Press, Polaris. Some have endured the delay in good humor. Others have not.
6:29am: An officer scans the bar code on my special inaugural credential. A friendly "blip" brings my name onto the screen of his handheld scanner. I am good to go. The photog behind me hears an unfortunate "bonk" sound instead - kind of like losing at Pong (dating myself, I know). He swears that youthful indiscretion was supposed to be expunged from his record! Can't they try again? After FIVE scans, the machine finally accepts him and he's cleared to photograph Barack Obama.
6:34am: After lingering in the heated security trailer as long as we can, we are finally chased back out into the cold by the Capitol Police.
6:35am: We cross the West Front onto the Capitol steps. Everything is in place for the inauguration. Rows of seats are set up behind the podium for members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and invited guests and dignitaries. I am shown to my seat. This can't be possible - I get to sit this close?
6:36am: Somebody pinch me. I have a chair, and a desk, with electricity, high-speed Internet and an ISDN broadcasting line. It is on an elevated platform directly to the right of the presidential podium, at the same height as the lectern. It is maybe 75 feet away from where Barack Obama will take the Oath of Office. The line of sight is unobstructed. I could hit the president with a snowball. Luckily, it isn't snowing. Yet.
6:37am to 11:30 am: The temperature drops to 19. With the wind chill, it feels like eight degrees. I can no longer feel my feet. The reporter to my right flees the platform with frostbite in his toes. He never returns. I wish I'd brought my other hat. And a space heater. And a blanket. And maybe some electrically heated down booties.
7:00am: My laptop shuts itself down and goes into hibernation. It becomes a block of iced aluminum. It stays that way for the duration of the inauguration. So much for blogging. So much for my high-speed DSL line. Guess I won't be writing my scripts on the computer!
7:01am: The ink in my pen stops flowing. It's frozen. Hmmm. Guess I won't be writing my scripts at all. I'll have to ad lib the rest of the day. It could be worse: two other reporters have their broadcasting gear freeze up. They are forced to report by phone the rest of the morning.
7:30am: We all decide to kill some time with a little breakfast. Except our energy bars, pastries and bagels have frozen solid. They would make nice doorstops. Or hockey pucks. They are like little carbohydrate icebergs. Our bottles of water have also frozen solid. They become weapons. The Secret Service considers confiscating them but takes pity on us. Some apply little hot pad toe warmers to the bottles, hoping to thaw them out so we can actually drink something over the next five hours. No such luck. I slap the toe warmers onto my feet. Unfortunately, this requires removing my shoes, which I think negates the positive effect of applying the warmers.
8:00am-11:30am: A vast throng fills the National Mall, from just west of us to the Lincoln Memorial, which is about two miles away. Every section between the Capitol and the Washington Monument is filled to capacity. Beyond that, some late arrivals fill in the spaces around the Reflecting Pool and at Lincoln's feet, but that area isn't completely full. We are given a preliminary crowd estimate of approximately one and a half million. It is an awesome sight. A slight turn to the right and I can gaze along the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is also lined now by the smaller parade crowd.
On the platform in front of us, senators and governors and former presidents begin to arrive. There's a large California contingent - Governor Schwarzenegger, former Governor Gray Davis, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. There's John Kerry talking with John McCain. Chris Dodd chats with his state mate, Joe Lieberman. Teddy Kennedy limps out to a big roar from the crowd. George H.W. Bush limps out too, looking surprisingly unsteady. Dick Cheney does him one better, coming out in a wheelchair after hurting himself moving out of the vice presidential residence. In a long black trenchcoat and black fedora, hunched in the wheelchair, he looks like the black-clad guy from Spy vs. Spy.
Below us, celebrities fill some of the next best seats. Don King, waving an American flag, holds court. His shock of gray hair isn't as tall as it used to be. There's Denzel Washington, and Beyonce, and Jay-Z and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
11:30am: The ceremony is behind schedule. Howard Gantman, longtime aide to Senator Dianne Feinstein, told me two weeks ago that Obama absolutely must be sworn in before noon, to comply with the Constitution. The oath is scheduled for 11:56. But here they are, running about 15 minutes late. Perhaps they'll push Yo Yo Ma back, or Aretha Franklin.
Nope. They continue with the program. Obama is sworn in a few minutes late. It doesn't matter - according to the Constitution, he becomes president at noon anyway, even though he hasn't taken the oath yet.
Random observations: President-elect Obama lost in apparent rapture as he listens to Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman play John Williams. Is he going over his speech? Pondering the import of what is about to happen? Simply lost in the music? Meanwhile, his wife gets up and fusses over the kids....President Bush fidgeting and smirking and shifting in his seat. He seems uncomfortable. Maybe it's the cold. Maybe it's that a million people booed lustily when he was introduced. Maybe it's because during his speech, Obama essentially denounces all of the Bush-Cheney policies and says we'll have no more of that. That's got to be tough for Bush to hear, sitting three feet away...Denzel Washington, in long coat and knit cap, suddenly leaping to his feet in the middle of President Obama's speech, and standing in rapt attention the rest of the way...and most of all, one to two million people, completely still and silent, even in physical discomfort, absolutely transfixed by the words of their new president. Most of the time, the only sounds are the military helicopters and the booming voice of Mr. Obama, ringing out in a slight delay across the Mall. People hang on every word. It gives me chills - or maybe that's just the numbing cold.
12:37 (or so - I can no longer operate my iPhone to tell the time, because you can't use touch screens with gloves on, and with the gloves off, my fingers aren't generating enough heat to activate the touch screen): It's done. President Obama and the new First Lady depart the stage. The podium guests discard their blue wool commemorative blankets. We on the media platform covet them but the stern regard of the Secret Service dissuades us from trying to snag one. I hobble up the steps behind the presidential platform, looking for the nearest bathroom. The walk brings some feeling back into my feet. A knot of guards stands between me and the Port-a-Potty.
"Do you think I can use that Port-a-Potty? Would that be okay? Please?" I beg the nearest one, a tall guy in a dark suit, wrapped in one of those blue blankets.
He looks at me in surprise. "Why, I think...Yes! I say yes!"
I realize this one is not with the Secret Service. It's the actor John Cusack. For some reason, he was seated on the main dais with all those politicians.
"Well, you would Say Anything!" He gets the joke. I ask him what's written on the souvenir blanket. "It doesn't Say Anything," he deadpans.
As I limp into the port-a-john, a military helicopter rumbles into the air from the Capitol's East Front. It roars right over my head. It is now-former President Bush and his wife Laura, leaving the Capitol. A rousing cheer goes up from the remaining crowd, as they realize the significance. I fumble for my camera to get a shot but my frozen fingers aren't nimble enough.
John Cusack leaves. Don King runs his hand through his hair and makes sure no one else wants to interview him. The Obamas have gone inside the Capitol, for a gala luncheon led by my senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein. The transfer of power is complete. As always, it's been orderly, peaceful, and rich with ritual and tradition. And, this time, absolutely extraordinary, both bone-chilling and spine-tingling.
It will take me two hours to trudge all the way back to my hotel, schlepping my heavy gear, due to road closures and an overwhelmed Metro. At 5:07pm, I am finally indoors for the first time in 12 hours. I put my laptop on the radiator. It thaws out and boots up. I massage my numbed toes. I get some hot soup, my first food since a yogurt while in the security line at 5:30am. It's been a long, exhausting, cold day, and I still have about seven hours of work to do.
I will never forget a single second.
But how can I blog about a silly, celebrity-soaked party after what we witnessed today? I think I'll make the HuffPo report tomorrow's postscript to this adventure. For now, I offer instead this blow-by-blow of today's incredible proceedings:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2009
(as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States)
1:45am: Glad I only had one vodka martini at the party, I finally get to bed, just a few short hours before it's time to cover the swearing-in of a new American president.
4:00am: Fifteen minutes before the alarm is supposed to go off, I get up, awakened by sirens and the sounds of police setting up barricades outside my hotel. Yes, I have only slept two hours and 15 minutes, and fitfully at that.
4:49am: I leave the hotel, stepping out into a police zone. The cops have blocked the front door of my hotel. I am forced to exit through the service entrance on a side street, weaving through the hotel kitchen on a route that reminds me too much of Robert F. Kennedy's last moments.
5:02am: Lugging two heavy bags of broadcasting gear, I board the Metro, bound for the Capitol. Luckily, the surging crowd is getting off at my station, not on, so the train isn't that crowded. Most of this pre-dawn throng is heading for the National Mall, not the Capitol itself.
5:22am: I exit the train and stroll up to the Capitol grounds. Hey, this is going great! Empty train, no delays, smooth sailing. I have been told by the Secret Service that I must be on site between 4 and 6am, for screening of all my equipment and to get in place on the Capitol's West Front. It is 22 degrees.
5:23am: Uh-oh. Everything grinds to a halt. I join the longest security line I have ever seen. It's mostly media, mixed with a large group of military medical personnel in camouflage. The queue snakes out the security trailer, down Capitol Hill, around a bend...it's at least two blocks long. Everyone is stunned.
6:28am: One hour and five minutes later, it's finally my turn to go through the magnetometers. The temperature has dropped to 20 degrees. We have all been shivering in the pre-dawn cold. Photographers mostly, from Time, Reuters, Agence France-Press, Polaris. Some have endured the delay in good humor. Others have not.
6:29am: An officer scans the bar code on my special inaugural credential. A friendly "blip" brings my name onto the screen of his handheld scanner. I am good to go. The photog behind me hears an unfortunate "bonk" sound instead - kind of like losing at Pong (dating myself, I know). He swears that youthful indiscretion was supposed to be expunged from his record! Can't they try again? After FIVE scans, the machine finally accepts him and he's cleared to photograph Barack Obama.
6:34am: After lingering in the heated security trailer as long as we can, we are finally chased back out into the cold by the Capitol Police.
6:35am: We cross the West Front onto the Capitol steps. Everything is in place for the inauguration. Rows of seats are set up behind the podium for members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and invited guests and dignitaries. I am shown to my seat. This can't be possible - I get to sit this close?
6:36am: Somebody pinch me. I have a chair, and a desk, with electricity, high-speed Internet and an ISDN broadcasting line. It is on an elevated platform directly to the right of the presidential podium, at the same height as the lectern. It is maybe 75 feet away from where Barack Obama will take the Oath of Office. The line of sight is unobstructed. I could hit the president with a snowball. Luckily, it isn't snowing. Yet.
6:37am to 11:30 am: The temperature drops to 19. With the wind chill, it feels like eight degrees. I can no longer feel my feet. The reporter to my right flees the platform with frostbite in his toes. He never returns. I wish I'd brought my other hat. And a space heater. And a blanket. And maybe some electrically heated down booties.
7:00am: My laptop shuts itself down and goes into hibernation. It becomes a block of iced aluminum. It stays that way for the duration of the inauguration. So much for blogging. So much for my high-speed DSL line. Guess I won't be writing my scripts on the computer!
7:01am: The ink in my pen stops flowing. It's frozen. Hmmm. Guess I won't be writing my scripts at all. I'll have to ad lib the rest of the day. It could be worse: two other reporters have their broadcasting gear freeze up. They are forced to report by phone the rest of the morning.
7:30am: We all decide to kill some time with a little breakfast. Except our energy bars, pastries and bagels have frozen solid. They would make nice doorstops. Or hockey pucks. They are like little carbohydrate icebergs. Our bottles of water have also frozen solid. They become weapons. The Secret Service considers confiscating them but takes pity on us. Some apply little hot pad toe warmers to the bottles, hoping to thaw them out so we can actually drink something over the next five hours. No such luck. I slap the toe warmers onto my feet. Unfortunately, this requires removing my shoes, which I think negates the positive effect of applying the warmers.
8:00am-11:30am: A vast throng fills the National Mall, from just west of us to the Lincoln Memorial, which is about two miles away. Every section between the Capitol and the Washington Monument is filled to capacity. Beyond that, some late arrivals fill in the spaces around the Reflecting Pool and at Lincoln's feet, but that area isn't completely full. We are given a preliminary crowd estimate of approximately one and a half million. It is an awesome sight. A slight turn to the right and I can gaze along the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is also lined now by the smaller parade crowd.
On the platform in front of us, senators and governors and former presidents begin to arrive. There's a large California contingent - Governor Schwarzenegger, former Governor Gray Davis, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. There's John Kerry talking with John McCain. Chris Dodd chats with his state mate, Joe Lieberman. Teddy Kennedy limps out to a big roar from the crowd. George H.W. Bush limps out too, looking surprisingly unsteady. Dick Cheney does him one better, coming out in a wheelchair after hurting himself moving out of the vice presidential residence. In a long black trenchcoat and black fedora, hunched in the wheelchair, he looks like the black-clad guy from Spy vs. Spy.
Below us, celebrities fill some of the next best seats. Don King, waving an American flag, holds court. His shock of gray hair isn't as tall as it used to be. There's Denzel Washington, and Beyonce, and Jay-Z and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
11:30am: The ceremony is behind schedule. Howard Gantman, longtime aide to Senator Dianne Feinstein, told me two weeks ago that Obama absolutely must be sworn in before noon, to comply with the Constitution. The oath is scheduled for 11:56. But here they are, running about 15 minutes late. Perhaps they'll push Yo Yo Ma back, or Aretha Franklin.
Nope. They continue with the program. Obama is sworn in a few minutes late. It doesn't matter - according to the Constitution, he becomes president at noon anyway, even though he hasn't taken the oath yet.
Random observations: President-elect Obama lost in apparent rapture as he listens to Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman play John Williams. Is he going over his speech? Pondering the import of what is about to happen? Simply lost in the music? Meanwhile, his wife gets up and fusses over the kids....President Bush fidgeting and smirking and shifting in his seat. He seems uncomfortable. Maybe it's the cold. Maybe it's that a million people booed lustily when he was introduced. Maybe it's because during his speech, Obama essentially denounces all of the Bush-Cheney policies and says we'll have no more of that. That's got to be tough for Bush to hear, sitting three feet away...Denzel Washington, in long coat and knit cap, suddenly leaping to his feet in the middle of President Obama's speech, and standing in rapt attention the rest of the way...and most of all, one to two million people, completely still and silent, even in physical discomfort, absolutely transfixed by the words of their new president. Most of the time, the only sounds are the military helicopters and the booming voice of Mr. Obama, ringing out in a slight delay across the Mall. People hang on every word. It gives me chills - or maybe that's just the numbing cold.
12:37 (or so - I can no longer operate my iPhone to tell the time, because you can't use touch screens with gloves on, and with the gloves off, my fingers aren't generating enough heat to activate the touch screen): It's done. President Obama and the new First Lady depart the stage. The podium guests discard their blue wool commemorative blankets. We on the media platform covet them but the stern regard of the Secret Service dissuades us from trying to snag one. I hobble up the steps behind the presidential platform, looking for the nearest bathroom. The walk brings some feeling back into my feet. A knot of guards stands between me and the Port-a-Potty.
"Do you think I can use that Port-a-Potty? Would that be okay? Please?" I beg the nearest one, a tall guy in a dark suit, wrapped in one of those blue blankets.
He looks at me in surprise. "Why, I think...Yes! I say yes!"
I realize this one is not with the Secret Service. It's the actor John Cusack. For some reason, he was seated on the main dais with all those politicians.
"Well, you would Say Anything!" He gets the joke. I ask him what's written on the souvenir blanket. "It doesn't Say Anything," he deadpans.
As I limp into the port-a-john, a military helicopter rumbles into the air from the Capitol's East Front. It roars right over my head. It is now-former President Bush and his wife Laura, leaving the Capitol. A rousing cheer goes up from the remaining crowd, as they realize the significance. I fumble for my camera to get a shot but my frozen fingers aren't nimble enough.
John Cusack leaves. Don King runs his hand through his hair and makes sure no one else wants to interview him. The Obamas have gone inside the Capitol, for a gala luncheon led by my senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein. The transfer of power is complete. As always, it's been orderly, peaceful, and rich with ritual and tradition. And, this time, absolutely extraordinary, both bone-chilling and spine-tingling.
It will take me two hours to trudge all the way back to my hotel, schlepping my heavy gear, due to road closures and an overwhelmed Metro. At 5:07pm, I am finally indoors for the first time in 12 hours. I put my laptop on the radiator. It thaws out and boots up. I massage my numbed toes. I get some hot soup, my first food since a yogurt while in the security line at 5:30am. It's been a long, exhausting, cold day, and I still have about seven hours of work to do.
I will never forget a single second.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
On the Verge of History
If I have felt anything like this before, I can't remember when.
The energy is palpable. The sense of euphoria, of optimism, of possibility, is coursing through Washington D.C. like fresh blood through the veins of a previously anemic man. Our capital city has come crackling to life. People are pouring into town by the hundreds of thousands, clogging the streets, thronging the monuments and memorials and museums, high-fiving total strangers and bursting into spontaneous whoops of joy.
Maybe this is how it felt when World War Two ended. I wouldn't be surprised to see a sailor bend a nurse over backwards and kiss her, hard, on the National Mall.
I arrived in Washington Sunday afternoon by Amtrak from New York. The train was packed, completely sold out, and except for the woman who got all in a snit when I politely informed her husband that he had taken my seat while I was visiting the snack car (somehow this was my fault?) and could he please relocate - everyone was in high spirits, unusually friendly and open and sharing. Can we help that passenger with her bag? Yes we can! Can we hold the door for an older couple and help them find seats? Yes we can! Can we share our stories of where we came from and why we're here and what being at the Obama inauguration will mean? Yes we can!
The Amtrak crowd spilled into Union Station to find Enrique Iglesias rehearsing on a stage in the middle of the terminal (at least I think that's who it was). The train station will host the Latino Inaugural Ball Tuesday night, one of about a dozen official balls around town. From there it was out onto the broad boulevards so famously laid out by Pierre L'Enfant more than 200 years ago. Now they are lined with portapotties and police barricades. Heavily armed cops in SWAT gear roam the streets. Helicopters chatter overhead. Emergency vehicles race past, sirens wailing. And through it all, the people come, smiling, laughing, chatting with complete strangers, riding a buoyant wave of Obamamania.
The Mall was a crush of people, from memorial to shining memorial. Lincoln gazed down from his throne on a crowd right out of "Forrest Gump." The red light high atop Washington's monument blinked upon maybe 500,000 people below, some of whom camped out for hours for free seats at the "We Are One" concert. They lined the sides of the Reflecting Pool; they spilled out onto Constitution Avenue. They clapped their hands and sang "Shout!" with a surprisingly ebullient Garth Brooks. They belted out the "oh, oh, oh, oh!" coda to "Pride" with U2. They wept as they rang out "This Land Is Your Land" with Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger, strumming a banjo as if he were singing "Little Boxes" to me back in the 1960s. Towards the end of the show, the President-elect strode onto the stage and told the adoring crowd "Anything is possible." Right now, right here, it sure feels that way.
P.S. I went to the California Gala tonight and have scored VIP passes to the hot-hot-hot Huffington Post party tomorrow night at the Newseum. There's lots to say about all that but somehow it feels trivial at the moment. We'll get to that next time.
The energy is palpable. The sense of euphoria, of optimism, of possibility, is coursing through Washington D.C. like fresh blood through the veins of a previously anemic man. Our capital city has come crackling to life. People are pouring into town by the hundreds of thousands, clogging the streets, thronging the monuments and memorials and museums, high-fiving total strangers and bursting into spontaneous whoops of joy.
Maybe this is how it felt when World War Two ended. I wouldn't be surprised to see a sailor bend a nurse over backwards and kiss her, hard, on the National Mall.
I arrived in Washington Sunday afternoon by Amtrak from New York. The train was packed, completely sold out, and except for the woman who got all in a snit when I politely informed her husband that he had taken my seat while I was visiting the snack car (somehow this was my fault?) and could he please relocate - everyone was in high spirits, unusually friendly and open and sharing. Can we help that passenger with her bag? Yes we can! Can we hold the door for an older couple and help them find seats? Yes we can! Can we share our stories of where we came from and why we're here and what being at the Obama inauguration will mean? Yes we can!
The Amtrak crowd spilled into Union Station to find Enrique Iglesias rehearsing on a stage in the middle of the terminal (at least I think that's who it was). The train station will host the Latino Inaugural Ball Tuesday night, one of about a dozen official balls around town. From there it was out onto the broad boulevards so famously laid out by Pierre L'Enfant more than 200 years ago. Now they are lined with portapotties and police barricades. Heavily armed cops in SWAT gear roam the streets. Helicopters chatter overhead. Emergency vehicles race past, sirens wailing. And through it all, the people come, smiling, laughing, chatting with complete strangers, riding a buoyant wave of Obamamania.
The Mall was a crush of people, from memorial to shining memorial. Lincoln gazed down from his throne on a crowd right out of "Forrest Gump." The red light high atop Washington's monument blinked upon maybe 500,000 people below, some of whom camped out for hours for free seats at the "We Are One" concert. They lined the sides of the Reflecting Pool; they spilled out onto Constitution Avenue. They clapped their hands and sang "Shout!" with a surprisingly ebullient Garth Brooks. They belted out the "oh, oh, oh, oh!" coda to "Pride" with U2. They wept as they rang out "This Land Is Your Land" with Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger, strumming a banjo as if he were singing "Little Boxes" to me back in the 1960s. Towards the end of the show, the President-elect strode onto the stage and told the adoring crowd "Anything is possible." Right now, right here, it sure feels that way.
P.S. I went to the California Gala tonight and have scored VIP passes to the hot-hot-hot Huffington Post party tomorrow night at the Newseum. There's lots to say about all that but somehow it feels trivial at the moment. We'll get to that next time.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Now What?
At the end of the movie "The Candidate," after Robert Redford's character (Joe McKay? Mike McKay? Something like that) pulls off a huge upset and gets elected to the U.S. Senate from California, he turns to his handlers and asks, "Now what?"
We might well ask ourselves the same question right now. About President-elect Barack Obama, about the near-term fate of our economy and our country, and even, in my case, about my blog and the Sovern Nation website.
It's only taken me a week to get around to sharing my post-election thoughts. Election Night was a wee-hour blur of pizza slices and spreadsheet numbers and Twitter messages. The next two days were spent doing election postmortems, both on the radio and at a California Historical Society panel. I spent part of the Morning After in downtown Oakland, getting the reaction of older African Americans to the historic election of a black president. Then I knocked off our final parody song of the campaign, to the tune of "American Pie," with the as-usual off-key help of my newsroom buddies, Mark and Angela. And I've been really busy buying a house and planning my wedding - so no, I haven't had a chance for that post-election vacation just yet!
But now I do have a few moments to reflect on what we've all been through, and what it all means.
(Before I do that, though, a few quick housekeeping notes: The Election Night Live Blog was a great success, with 242 different people taking part in the online conversation. And I don't think more than five or six of them were related to me. Thanks to everyone who joined the fun! If you'd like to hear the audio recap of the general election campaign, a two-minute special sound piece I did that aired Election Morning, click here. You can hear the story about elderly African Americans reacting to the election here, and you can hear "Bye Bye to the Republican Guy" here - our biggest hit campaign song ever, with many complimentary emails and a couple dozen requests for copies).
So. Barack Obama beat John McCain. I know that I said he would, in my last blog, but that didn't reassure a lot of the anxious Democrats I know. They were, to put it mildly, freaking out. But this election just wasn't that close. I was way off on the Electoral College, but I did do pretty well on that popular vote prediction. I said Obama would win with 52.5% of the vote, and that McCain would get 46.5%, a six-point spread. The not-quite final numbers? Obama has 52.6%, and McCain has 46.1. That's as good as I've ever done at these things.
But I really didn't think Obama would roll up such a huge win in the Electoral College. I was sure the Republicans would pull out some of those too-close-to-call swing states, but instead they all went for Obama - except Missouri, which still isn't decided. McCain is winning the Show Me State by 5000 votes right now, but they still have thousands of absentee ballots to count.
Obama won North Carolina and Indiana by a single point each, Florida by two, Ohio by four. He carried Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada in double-digit landslides. In most states, either the polls were right, or they understated Obama's support. There was no Bradley Effect. The racist vote was swamped by the turnout of young people and black voters, and by the huge gender gap American women gave the Democrats. In retrospect, probably any Democratic nominee could have beaten John McCain, given the tattered economy and all the built-in disadvantages for the GOP. If she had beaten Obama in the primary, Hillary Clinton would be president-elect right now. In many ways, the Democratic primary was like one of those conference championship games in football that people call "the REAL Super Bowl," matching two top teams for the right to play a lesser-regarded one from the other conference. McCain was the weak sister from the patsy conference, and the Democrats the elite powerhouse.
It's no mystery how Obama won. He ran a first-rate campaign, the most disciplined and best-organized I've ever seen, avoided serious missteps, and stayed positive, upbeat and hopeful. When the economy collapsed, and McCain thrashed about, Obama remained cool, calm and collected. He reaped the benefit of the enormous antipathy the electorate feels toward the Republican Party in general, and President Bush in particular. And when he got the lead, he sat on the ball and ran out the clock, to borrow another football metaphor.
And now we will have our first African American president.
That still feels like an extraordinary thing to say. After a few months, when he's screwed up a couple of things and the economy is still sputtering and our troops are still in Iraq, people may start to forget that Barack Obama is a Black President, and will treat him just like any other beleaguered chief executive, and that is as it should be (of course I hope nothing at all goes wrong, but let's be realistic here!). But right now, Obama's election feels so deep and visceral and earth-shaking. I went out the next morning and saw people running for the bus, and rushing to catch their trains, and I thought, what are these people doing? Don't they know how different everything is today? How can they go about their everyday lives when something so profound has taken place?
Of course, in our day-to-day lives, maybe it's not that profound. If you didn't have a job a week ago, you probably still don't. If you were going broke last week, Obama's election didn't magically replenish your bank account. The president doesn't really have that much impact on us individually; your mayor or governor probably affects you much more.
But then there was the young black man who told me he's going to go back to college, because if Obama can win the White House, he can certainly get those last few credits. There was the middle-aged black woman who is suddenly inspired to finally start her own business. There was the 60-something Oakland street vendor, originally from Louisiana, who said "I finally feel like I have a place in society, that all of us matter, not just white folk."
In my neighborhood, there are only two people who routinely fly American flags from their houses on the Fourth of July, or Flag Day. When I went out last Wednesday morning to walk the dog, a few hours after Barack Obama was elected president, I counted six American flags fluttering in the November breeze on my street alone. Brand new flags, flown proudly, saluting the country that wasn't too afraid to take such a bold and giant step. I can't possibly feel what an African American must feel right now, looking at the handsome black face that will represent America to the world. But I can think back on three centuries of oppression, slavery and racial hatred, and marvel at how far we've come. Yes, we have a long way to go, but as Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared on the steps of the Montgomery County Courthouse in 1965, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
I can still remember asking my mother and stepfather in early 1968 whether Rev. King was going to be the next president. I had only known one, name of Lyndon Baines Johnson, but King was making as much news as any of the presidential candidates - McCarthy, Humphrey, Kennedy, Wallace - and a speech I'd seen him deliver on TV had given me goosebumps. I guess I was too young to understand that the White House was the exclusive province of white men. My eternally optimistic mom gave me a diplomatic answer, something along the lines of "I really don't think so, but you never know!" It was left to my much blunter stepfather to deliver the crushing blow: "What are you talking about? Quit your daydreaming. America will never elect a black president." A few weeks later, King was dead. We cried at school. There were riots in the streets. He was right, I thought.
It only took 40 more years, but I'm happy, for all our sake, to be able to say, finally, that he was wrong.
We might well ask ourselves the same question right now. About President-elect Barack Obama, about the near-term fate of our economy and our country, and even, in my case, about my blog and the Sovern Nation website.
It's only taken me a week to get around to sharing my post-election thoughts. Election Night was a wee-hour blur of pizza slices and spreadsheet numbers and Twitter messages. The next two days were spent doing election postmortems, both on the radio and at a California Historical Society panel. I spent part of the Morning After in downtown Oakland, getting the reaction of older African Americans to the historic election of a black president. Then I knocked off our final parody song of the campaign, to the tune of "American Pie," with the as-usual off-key help of my newsroom buddies, Mark and Angela. And I've been really busy buying a house and planning my wedding - so no, I haven't had a chance for that post-election vacation just yet!
But now I do have a few moments to reflect on what we've all been through, and what it all means.
(Before I do that, though, a few quick housekeeping notes: The Election Night Live Blog was a great success, with 242 different people taking part in the online conversation. And I don't think more than five or six of them were related to me. Thanks to everyone who joined the fun! If you'd like to hear the audio recap of the general election campaign, a two-minute special sound piece I did that aired Election Morning, click here. You can hear the story about elderly African Americans reacting to the election here, and you can hear "Bye Bye to the Republican Guy" here - our biggest hit campaign song ever, with many complimentary emails and a couple dozen requests for copies).
So. Barack Obama beat John McCain. I know that I said he would, in my last blog, but that didn't reassure a lot of the anxious Democrats I know. They were, to put it mildly, freaking out. But this election just wasn't that close. I was way off on the Electoral College, but I did do pretty well on that popular vote prediction. I said Obama would win with 52.5% of the vote, and that McCain would get 46.5%, a six-point spread. The not-quite final numbers? Obama has 52.6%, and McCain has 46.1. That's as good as I've ever done at these things.
But I really didn't think Obama would roll up such a huge win in the Electoral College. I was sure the Republicans would pull out some of those too-close-to-call swing states, but instead they all went for Obama - except Missouri, which still isn't decided. McCain is winning the Show Me State by 5000 votes right now, but they still have thousands of absentee ballots to count.
Obama won North Carolina and Indiana by a single point each, Florida by two, Ohio by four. He carried Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada in double-digit landslides. In most states, either the polls were right, or they understated Obama's support. There was no Bradley Effect. The racist vote was swamped by the turnout of young people and black voters, and by the huge gender gap American women gave the Democrats. In retrospect, probably any Democratic nominee could have beaten John McCain, given the tattered economy and all the built-in disadvantages for the GOP. If she had beaten Obama in the primary, Hillary Clinton would be president-elect right now. In many ways, the Democratic primary was like one of those conference championship games in football that people call "the REAL Super Bowl," matching two top teams for the right to play a lesser-regarded one from the other conference. McCain was the weak sister from the patsy conference, and the Democrats the elite powerhouse.
It's no mystery how Obama won. He ran a first-rate campaign, the most disciplined and best-organized I've ever seen, avoided serious missteps, and stayed positive, upbeat and hopeful. When the economy collapsed, and McCain thrashed about, Obama remained cool, calm and collected. He reaped the benefit of the enormous antipathy the electorate feels toward the Republican Party in general, and President Bush in particular. And when he got the lead, he sat on the ball and ran out the clock, to borrow another football metaphor.
And now we will have our first African American president.
That still feels like an extraordinary thing to say. After a few months, when he's screwed up a couple of things and the economy is still sputtering and our troops are still in Iraq, people may start to forget that Barack Obama is a Black President, and will treat him just like any other beleaguered chief executive, and that is as it should be (of course I hope nothing at all goes wrong, but let's be realistic here!). But right now, Obama's election feels so deep and visceral and earth-shaking. I went out the next morning and saw people running for the bus, and rushing to catch their trains, and I thought, what are these people doing? Don't they know how different everything is today? How can they go about their everyday lives when something so profound has taken place?
Of course, in our day-to-day lives, maybe it's not that profound. If you didn't have a job a week ago, you probably still don't. If you were going broke last week, Obama's election didn't magically replenish your bank account. The president doesn't really have that much impact on us individually; your mayor or governor probably affects you much more.
But then there was the young black man who told me he's going to go back to college, because if Obama can win the White House, he can certainly get those last few credits. There was the middle-aged black woman who is suddenly inspired to finally start her own business. There was the 60-something Oakland street vendor, originally from Louisiana, who said "I finally feel like I have a place in society, that all of us matter, not just white folk."
In my neighborhood, there are only two people who routinely fly American flags from their houses on the Fourth of July, or Flag Day. When I went out last Wednesday morning to walk the dog, a few hours after Barack Obama was elected president, I counted six American flags fluttering in the November breeze on my street alone. Brand new flags, flown proudly, saluting the country that wasn't too afraid to take such a bold and giant step. I can't possibly feel what an African American must feel right now, looking at the handsome black face that will represent America to the world. But I can think back on three centuries of oppression, slavery and racial hatred, and marvel at how far we've come. Yes, we have a long way to go, but as Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared on the steps of the Montgomery County Courthouse in 1965, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
I can still remember asking my mother and stepfather in early 1968 whether Rev. King was going to be the next president. I had only known one, name of Lyndon Baines Johnson, but King was making as much news as any of the presidential candidates - McCarthy, Humphrey, Kennedy, Wallace - and a speech I'd seen him deliver on TV had given me goosebumps. I guess I was too young to understand that the White House was the exclusive province of white men. My eternally optimistic mom gave me a diplomatic answer, something along the lines of "I really don't think so, but you never know!" It was left to my much blunter stepfather to deliver the crushing blow: "What are you talking about? Quit your daydreaming. America will never elect a black president." A few weeks later, King was dead. We cried at school. There were riots in the streets. He was right, I thought.
It only took 40 more years, but I'm happy, for all our sake, to be able to say, finally, that he was wrong.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Obama Beats McCain
There you have it - tomorrow's headline today. KCBS - where we report the news before it even happens.
I am going out on a not very precarious limb with my quadrennial presidential prediction. This is my 69th, and final, pre-election blog posting (I will be blogging live on Election Night, but that's another matter).
If I'm wrong, John McCain can wave my words in the air and crow with glee, but something tells me he'll have much bigger media fish to fry if he pulls off one of the biggest upsets in history and beats Barack Obama.
I've been predicting presidential results since 1972. Yes, I was only 11 years old, but somehow, something told me that Nixon would wallop McGovern. Maybe it was Walter Cronkite. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe it was Thomas Eagleton's shock therapist. I simply can't remember.
I have a pretty good track record - I've gotten seven elections right and only two wrong. But I have to warn all you anxious Obama backers that it's the last two in a row that I've blown. In 2000, I detected the weirdness in the air but I read it exactly backwards: I predicted that George W. Bush would win the popular vote but that Al Gore would capture the Electoral College. Oops. And then in 2004, I really believed that John Kerry would win Ohio, and thus the presidency, but it didn't happen that way. So maybe you'd better take my prognostication with a big rock of salt.
This time though, I can back up my prediction with some actual returns, even before most of us go to the polls. As is the tradition, the voters of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire have already voted and announced the results. Have you ever been to Dixville Notch? It's a tiny hamlet way up there in the Great North Woods of northern New Hampshire, where most of the town's 75 residents run a beautiful White Mountains resort called The Balsams. I went to camp not too far from there - which brings me to another Nixon reference, oddly enough. I still vividly remember August 8, 1974. The owner of the camp summoned all the older boys to his cabin. President Nixon was announcing his resignation on television, and the camp director thought at least some of his campers should experience this historic moment. As we boys quietly exulted in the end of the Nixon presidency, I looked over at the camp's owner - whose name has quietly faded from my aging brain - and was stunned to see him sobbing. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched his beloved president leave office in shame. "This is a sad day for America, boys," he kept murmuring. "Such a sad day."
Suffice to say, Dixville and environs are Republican strongholds, even to this day. The good people of the Notch almost always vote GOP. In fact, since 1960, only one Democrat has carried Dixville Notch, and that was Hubert Humphrey, who beat Nixon narrowly there in 1968 (I think our camp director votes in a different township).
Until today. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the first returns of the 2008 presidential election: in Dixville Notch, the vote, just past midnight, was: Barack Obama, 15; John McCain, 6; Ralph Nader, 1.
Now Dixville is no bellwether. As I said, it almost always votes Republican, with the exceptions of 1960 and 1968, which means in the last dozen elections the town has picked the winner seven times, and went with the loser the other five. But if Obama can win a landslide in the Notch, it doesn't bode well for McCain's chances across the Granite State.
This campaign has been a long, tiring, thrilling, fascinating, exasperating two-year slog. As Barack Obama said the other day, since this race started, babies have been born who have learned to walk and talk. Some of them have learned more about public policy in that time than Sarah Palin has. The candidates have spent more than a billion dollars, which is obscene. People have given their every ounce of energy for one candidate or the other; the 44-year-old state director of Obama's Nevada campaign collapsed and died of a heart attack yesterday, not long before Obama's own grandmother passed away, hours shy of perhaps seeing her little Barry become president.
For me, this campaign began in late 2006 - I think it was November, but it could have been October - when I interviewed the smart and lanky junior Senator from Illinois while he was on a book tour in San Francisco. Tall, thoughtful, deliberate almost to a fault - that was how I described him to my friends and family. Handsome, charismatic and obviously very intelligent - but damn, he stammers a lot, and seems to take an awfully long time coming up with those beautiful words.
Two years later, he's cut down on the ums and uhs, and he's also cut down every opponent in his path. Less than 24 hours from now, he will cut down the nets, to use a basketball metaphor, as he celebrates his election as President of the United States. He will be one of our youngest presidents. Only the third sitting Senator. Only the third representing Illinois (Lincoln and Grant precede him, although, like Obama, neither was born there; Ronald Reagan was, but ran as a Californian). The first Northerner since Kennedy (counting the first Bush as a Texan, not as the Connecticut Yankee he really was). The first Democratic President without a Southern accent since, again, JFK. The first president who is a graduate of Columbia University! (That's a tough one to believe, but it's true. Both Roosevelts attended Columbia Law School, and there have been quite a few Supreme Court Justices from Columbia, but Obama will be the first Columbia College grad to occupy the Oval Office).
And, of course, he will be the first non-white president. The first biracial, the first black, the first with African blood (as far as we know).
Barack Obama began his unlikely quest for the presidency with talk of hope, and change, and audacity. At times, his campaign has been anything but audacious. Certainly in its closing days he has played it quite safe. But he is going to ride that gale force wind of change right into the White House. We can't possibly exaggerate the social and cultural import of this moment. Tears of joy and pride will flow tonight in black communities across America. People will shake their heads in awe, even some of those who will have voted against him. Others will shake their fists in fear and anger. It will be up to Obama to prove them wrong, to win them over with his deeds, not his words, in the coming years.
Who in the world would want to be president right now? An economy in collapse, a world at war, a health care system run amok, overwhelming challenges in the fields of energy, security and finance.
Barack Hussein Obama, that's who. Someone asked him the other day what keeps him awake at night as the election approaches. "Not winning or losing," he answered with a smile. "Governing."
He's going to get his chance. It says it right here: Barack Obama 52.5%, John McCain 46.5%. Electoral College: Obama 291, McCain, 247.
That's my official prediction. I would give Obama 311, but Ohio has burned me before so I'm leaving it in McCain's column. I think this race has tightened in the closing days, so Obama doesn't get the landslide some are predicting. I think he could actually end up with 367 electoral votes, but that would mean sweeping most of those usually Republican battleground states. The final Gallup Poll predicts a 55%-44% victory for Obama. The final CBS News-New York Times pre-election poll forecasts a nine-point margin for Obama. I say it narrows to six in the end.
We will provide unprecedented resources at KCBS just so you can see if I'm right, or if you are, and what kind of history American voters will make this year (the first black president or the first female vice president? The oldest president? The first Vietnam vet?). Live coverage on the radio, of course, with non-stop results beginning when the first Eastern polls close at 4pm, plus interviews and analysis around the clock. You can listen to us in tinny old AM at 740 or now in lush stereophonic glory at 106.9 FM, or online at KCBS.com. We will have a beautiful red and blue Electoral College map on the website, where we will update the running vote totals once every 60 seconds, along with links to the results from every single county in every single state in America. I will be "live blogging," something I've never done before, on the Sovern Nation home page at www.sovernnation.com. I'll zap off a note or two whenever something meaningful happens, like when the pizza gets delivered to the newsroom or Obama wins Florida. I will post pithy comments from readers and listeners, too. You can follow along with KCBS on Twitter, with the latest delivered right to your cell phone, or however that Twitter thing works. And of course you can listen to any of our Election Night audio on demand on the website, too.
Tune in and hold on tight. It should be an amazing night. It's not often we can guarantee that an election will make history. This will be one you will remember forever.
www.sovernnation.com
I am going out on a not very precarious limb with my quadrennial presidential prediction. This is my 69th, and final, pre-election blog posting (I will be blogging live on Election Night, but that's another matter).
If I'm wrong, John McCain can wave my words in the air and crow with glee, but something tells me he'll have much bigger media fish to fry if he pulls off one of the biggest upsets in history and beats Barack Obama.
I've been predicting presidential results since 1972. Yes, I was only 11 years old, but somehow, something told me that Nixon would wallop McGovern. Maybe it was Walter Cronkite. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe it was Thomas Eagleton's shock therapist. I simply can't remember.
I have a pretty good track record - I've gotten seven elections right and only two wrong. But I have to warn all you anxious Obama backers that it's the last two in a row that I've blown. In 2000, I detected the weirdness in the air but I read it exactly backwards: I predicted that George W. Bush would win the popular vote but that Al Gore would capture the Electoral College. Oops. And then in 2004, I really believed that John Kerry would win Ohio, and thus the presidency, but it didn't happen that way. So maybe you'd better take my prognostication with a big rock of salt.
This time though, I can back up my prediction with some actual returns, even before most of us go to the polls. As is the tradition, the voters of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire have already voted and announced the results. Have you ever been to Dixville Notch? It's a tiny hamlet way up there in the Great North Woods of northern New Hampshire, where most of the town's 75 residents run a beautiful White Mountains resort called The Balsams. I went to camp not too far from there - which brings me to another Nixon reference, oddly enough. I still vividly remember August 8, 1974. The owner of the camp summoned all the older boys to his cabin. President Nixon was announcing his resignation on television, and the camp director thought at least some of his campers should experience this historic moment. As we boys quietly exulted in the end of the Nixon presidency, I looked over at the camp's owner - whose name has quietly faded from my aging brain - and was stunned to see him sobbing. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched his beloved president leave office in shame. "This is a sad day for America, boys," he kept murmuring. "Such a sad day."
Suffice to say, Dixville and environs are Republican strongholds, even to this day. The good people of the Notch almost always vote GOP. In fact, since 1960, only one Democrat has carried Dixville Notch, and that was Hubert Humphrey, who beat Nixon narrowly there in 1968 (I think our camp director votes in a different township).
Until today. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the first returns of the 2008 presidential election: in Dixville Notch, the vote, just past midnight, was: Barack Obama, 15; John McCain, 6; Ralph Nader, 1.
Now Dixville is no bellwether. As I said, it almost always votes Republican, with the exceptions of 1960 and 1968, which means in the last dozen elections the town has picked the winner seven times, and went with the loser the other five. But if Obama can win a landslide in the Notch, it doesn't bode well for McCain's chances across the Granite State.
This campaign has been a long, tiring, thrilling, fascinating, exasperating two-year slog. As Barack Obama said the other day, since this race started, babies have been born who have learned to walk and talk. Some of them have learned more about public policy in that time than Sarah Palin has. The candidates have spent more than a billion dollars, which is obscene. People have given their every ounce of energy for one candidate or the other; the 44-year-old state director of Obama's Nevada campaign collapsed and died of a heart attack yesterday, not long before Obama's own grandmother passed away, hours shy of perhaps seeing her little Barry become president.
For me, this campaign began in late 2006 - I think it was November, but it could have been October - when I interviewed the smart and lanky junior Senator from Illinois while he was on a book tour in San Francisco. Tall, thoughtful, deliberate almost to a fault - that was how I described him to my friends and family. Handsome, charismatic and obviously very intelligent - but damn, he stammers a lot, and seems to take an awfully long time coming up with those beautiful words.
Two years later, he's cut down on the ums and uhs, and he's also cut down every opponent in his path. Less than 24 hours from now, he will cut down the nets, to use a basketball metaphor, as he celebrates his election as President of the United States. He will be one of our youngest presidents. Only the third sitting Senator. Only the third representing Illinois (Lincoln and Grant precede him, although, like Obama, neither was born there; Ronald Reagan was, but ran as a Californian). The first Northerner since Kennedy (counting the first Bush as a Texan, not as the Connecticut Yankee he really was). The first Democratic President without a Southern accent since, again, JFK. The first president who is a graduate of Columbia University! (That's a tough one to believe, but it's true. Both Roosevelts attended Columbia Law School, and there have been quite a few Supreme Court Justices from Columbia, but Obama will be the first Columbia College grad to occupy the Oval Office).
And, of course, he will be the first non-white president. The first biracial, the first black, the first with African blood (as far as we know).
Barack Obama began his unlikely quest for the presidency with talk of hope, and change, and audacity. At times, his campaign has been anything but audacious. Certainly in its closing days he has played it quite safe. But he is going to ride that gale force wind of change right into the White House. We can't possibly exaggerate the social and cultural import of this moment. Tears of joy and pride will flow tonight in black communities across America. People will shake their heads in awe, even some of those who will have voted against him. Others will shake their fists in fear and anger. It will be up to Obama to prove them wrong, to win them over with his deeds, not his words, in the coming years.
Who in the world would want to be president right now? An economy in collapse, a world at war, a health care system run amok, overwhelming challenges in the fields of energy, security and finance.
Barack Hussein Obama, that's who. Someone asked him the other day what keeps him awake at night as the election approaches. "Not winning or losing," he answered with a smile. "Governing."
He's going to get his chance. It says it right here: Barack Obama 52.5%, John McCain 46.5%. Electoral College: Obama 291, McCain, 247.
That's my official prediction. I would give Obama 311, but Ohio has burned me before so I'm leaving it in McCain's column. I think this race has tightened in the closing days, so Obama doesn't get the landslide some are predicting. I think he could actually end up with 367 electoral votes, but that would mean sweeping most of those usually Republican battleground states. The final Gallup Poll predicts a 55%-44% victory for Obama. The final CBS News-New York Times pre-election poll forecasts a nine-point margin for Obama. I say it narrows to six in the end.
We will provide unprecedented resources at KCBS just so you can see if I'm right, or if you are, and what kind of history American voters will make this year (the first black president or the first female vice president? The oldest president? The first Vietnam vet?). Live coverage on the radio, of course, with non-stop results beginning when the first Eastern polls close at 4pm, plus interviews and analysis around the clock. You can listen to us in tinny old AM at 740 or now in lush stereophonic glory at 106.9 FM, or online at KCBS.com. We will have a beautiful red and blue Electoral College map on the website, where we will update the running vote totals once every 60 seconds, along with links to the results from every single county in every single state in America. I will be "live blogging," something I've never done before, on the Sovern Nation home page at www.sovernnation.com. I'll zap off a note or two whenever something meaningful happens, like when the pizza gets delivered to the newsroom or Obama wins Florida. I will post pithy comments from readers and listeners, too. You can follow along with KCBS on Twitter, with the latest delivered right to your cell phone, or however that Twitter thing works. And of course you can listen to any of our Election Night audio on demand on the website, too.
Tune in and hold on tight. It should be an amazing night. It's not often we can guarantee that an election will make history. This will be one you will remember forever.
www.sovernnation.com
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The View from the Middle
Where I live, the presidential election is settled. Barack Obama is poised to carry California by the widest margin in state history. The latest Field Poll gives him a 22-point lead over John McCain here, and if that holds, he will not only fare even better than former Governor and favorite son Ronald Reagan did in 1980 and 1984, but he will also surpass the record 18-point victory posted by LBJ in his 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater.
But I have traveled all across the country during this campaign, and I know that Californians are not necessarily representative. I have talked with voters in 13 states, including battlegrounds North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Nevada. Many of them have a completely different view of the candidates, and of this election.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Democrat Jeannette Potteiger told me about her father, a lifelong Democrat who hasn't actually voted since 1972. This time, he's voting - for John McCain. Why? "He wants to vote against Obama," she told me. "Because Obama's black." Some of her friends in Milwaukee feel the same way. "They've actually told me they would never vote for a black man, so they're voting for McCain. It makes no sense, because they completely disagree with McCain on the issues, and they agree with Obama. It's sad, actually."
Nick Weinberger of Columbus, Wisconsin has encountered some of the same racism. He's a Republican who will vote for McCain. He scoffs at Obama's roots as a community organizer. "Come on. A city planner? What the hell is that?" He asked me. No, a community organizer, I explained to him. "Whatever. That doesn't qualify you for the presidency." On the other hand, he thinks Sarah Palin is "fun" and "a pistol." He, too, has friends and family who simply won't vote for Obama because of his race. He's heard friends go off on five-minute long racist tirades about Obama, full of racial invective I won't repeat here. "There's better reasons to vote against Obama than his skin color," Weinberger told me. He's especially concerned about Obama's tax and economic policies.
McCain's derisive attacks on Obama as "Barack the Wealth Spreader" do seem to be resonating with middle-class Middle Americans. Never mind that if Obama really were a Socialist, they'd be the ones who would benefit the most. Never mind that Obama's tax plan, as he describes it, would lower their taxes. Some are legitimately afraid he will come take their hard-earned pay, and maybe their guns too while he's at it. Others are looking for an excuse to vote against him. Some don't trust Obama, or believe him when he insists only those making more than $250,000 will have to pay more. Obama didn't help his cause by suddenly lowering that threshold in his infomercial last night, to $200,000. Joe Biden took it even lower yesterday, to $150,000, although that may have been a typical Biden slip of the tongue, not an articulation of actual policy. Obama would do well to suggest that if McCain doesn't want to share the wealth, then he must want to keep concentrating it. But of course, we all know how faithful candidates are to their campaign promises, so who's to say that a President Obama, with a filibuster-proof Senate and a 100-seat majority in the House, won't propose an entirely different tax plan?
You don't really have to go to Wisconsin, or North Carolina, or Virginia, to find racists who might vote for Obama if only he were white. We've got them here in the progressive, enlightened Bay Area too. Voters have expressed that kind of bigotry to my face, if not into my microphone. I did a story on it yesterday. I ran into Senator Barbara Boxer and she didn't particularly like it. "I was just listening to your comments about race. I hate stories like that," she told me. "You're just giving voice to racism." At first I copped out by saying, well, we have to do the race story. But then I defended it more legitimately. "Wait a second," I told her. "It's real. The racism is out there. It's a serious issue. You can't ignore the elephant in the room." Besides, it's a lot better to expose bigotry than to ignore it and pretend it isn't there. She didn't agree, saying we're just legitimizing the racism by airing it, and giving these people a forum.
It will be difficult to measure the impact of racism in next week's numbers, but if Obama doesn't win, you can bet plenty of pundits and pollsters will try.
Beyond the Midwest, and the Middle Class, there's another kind of Middle Earth in this election. It's inhabited not by hobbits in search of a ring, but by voters in search of a candidate. They are the middle-of-the-road undecideds. Some people find it hard to believe anyone could still be undecided. But they're out there. One Northern California voter told me, he's a loyal Republican who's fed up with President Bush and the GOP. He says his party abandoned fiscal conservatism a long time ago, and he's more moderate than the party is on social issues. But he's having a really hard time voting for Obama. He doesn't think the first-term Senator is ready to be president, and he's wary of his economic policies. So five days before the election, he just can't commit either way.
Then there's the Tennessee Democrat I met outside Lambeau Field in Green Bay. He really wants to vote for McCain, because he respects his military service and thinks he'd make a better leader than Obama. He swears he's not racist, but he's ready to jump ship from the Democrats this time because he says he just doesn't know where Obama will take the country. But he was absolutely appalled by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for vice president, and now he's torn. Obama or McCain? He told me he probably won't decide until he steps into the voting booth.
On the coasts, the race is over. Obama will sweep the Far West, with the exception of Palin's Alaska and maybe McCain's Arizona (although if it's a landslide, Obama could even embarrass McCain in his home state). He will also carry the Eastern Seaboard, from Maine all the way to Virginia, and maybe even as far south as North Carolina. But the presidency will be decided in the great middle of the country, the places we fly over on Jet Blue. If big swaths of that map turn blue next Tuesday, then the racism won't have mattered after all. If they stay red, then we'll know that McCain's 11th-hour economic arguments and scare tactics - "John the Fear Spreader" - will have carried the day.
Fresh interviews, analysis, ballot measure stories and the latest polls, all at www.sovernnation.com
But I have traveled all across the country during this campaign, and I know that Californians are not necessarily representative. I have talked with voters in 13 states, including battlegrounds North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Nevada. Many of them have a completely different view of the candidates, and of this election.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Democrat Jeannette Potteiger told me about her father, a lifelong Democrat who hasn't actually voted since 1972. This time, he's voting - for John McCain. Why? "He wants to vote against Obama," she told me. "Because Obama's black." Some of her friends in Milwaukee feel the same way. "They've actually told me they would never vote for a black man, so they're voting for McCain. It makes no sense, because they completely disagree with McCain on the issues, and they agree with Obama. It's sad, actually."
Nick Weinberger of Columbus, Wisconsin has encountered some of the same racism. He's a Republican who will vote for McCain. He scoffs at Obama's roots as a community organizer. "Come on. A city planner? What the hell is that?" He asked me. No, a community organizer, I explained to him. "Whatever. That doesn't qualify you for the presidency." On the other hand, he thinks Sarah Palin is "fun" and "a pistol." He, too, has friends and family who simply won't vote for Obama because of his race. He's heard friends go off on five-minute long racist tirades about Obama, full of racial invective I won't repeat here. "There's better reasons to vote against Obama than his skin color," Weinberger told me. He's especially concerned about Obama's tax and economic policies.
McCain's derisive attacks on Obama as "Barack the Wealth Spreader" do seem to be resonating with middle-class Middle Americans. Never mind that if Obama really were a Socialist, they'd be the ones who would benefit the most. Never mind that Obama's tax plan, as he describes it, would lower their taxes. Some are legitimately afraid he will come take their hard-earned pay, and maybe their guns too while he's at it. Others are looking for an excuse to vote against him. Some don't trust Obama, or believe him when he insists only those making more than $250,000 will have to pay more. Obama didn't help his cause by suddenly lowering that threshold in his infomercial last night, to $200,000. Joe Biden took it even lower yesterday, to $150,000, although that may have been a typical Biden slip of the tongue, not an articulation of actual policy. Obama would do well to suggest that if McCain doesn't want to share the wealth, then he must want to keep concentrating it. But of course, we all know how faithful candidates are to their campaign promises, so who's to say that a President Obama, with a filibuster-proof Senate and a 100-seat majority in the House, won't propose an entirely different tax plan?
You don't really have to go to Wisconsin, or North Carolina, or Virginia, to find racists who might vote for Obama if only he were white. We've got them here in the progressive, enlightened Bay Area too. Voters have expressed that kind of bigotry to my face, if not into my microphone. I did a story on it yesterday. I ran into Senator Barbara Boxer and she didn't particularly like it. "I was just listening to your comments about race. I hate stories like that," she told me. "You're just giving voice to racism." At first I copped out by saying, well, we have to do the race story. But then I defended it more legitimately. "Wait a second," I told her. "It's real. The racism is out there. It's a serious issue. You can't ignore the elephant in the room." Besides, it's a lot better to expose bigotry than to ignore it and pretend it isn't there. She didn't agree, saying we're just legitimizing the racism by airing it, and giving these people a forum.
It will be difficult to measure the impact of racism in next week's numbers, but if Obama doesn't win, you can bet plenty of pundits and pollsters will try.
Beyond the Midwest, and the Middle Class, there's another kind of Middle Earth in this election. It's inhabited not by hobbits in search of a ring, but by voters in search of a candidate. They are the middle-of-the-road undecideds. Some people find it hard to believe anyone could still be undecided. But they're out there. One Northern California voter told me, he's a loyal Republican who's fed up with President Bush and the GOP. He says his party abandoned fiscal conservatism a long time ago, and he's more moderate than the party is on social issues. But he's having a really hard time voting for Obama. He doesn't think the first-term Senator is ready to be president, and he's wary of his economic policies. So five days before the election, he just can't commit either way.
Then there's the Tennessee Democrat I met outside Lambeau Field in Green Bay. He really wants to vote for McCain, because he respects his military service and thinks he'd make a better leader than Obama. He swears he's not racist, but he's ready to jump ship from the Democrats this time because he says he just doesn't know where Obama will take the country. But he was absolutely appalled by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for vice president, and now he's torn. Obama or McCain? He told me he probably won't decide until he steps into the voting booth.
On the coasts, the race is over. Obama will sweep the Far West, with the exception of Palin's Alaska and maybe McCain's Arizona (although if it's a landslide, Obama could even embarrass McCain in his home state). He will also carry the Eastern Seaboard, from Maine all the way to Virginia, and maybe even as far south as North Carolina. But the presidency will be decided in the great middle of the country, the places we fly over on Jet Blue. If big swaths of that map turn blue next Tuesday, then the racism won't have mattered after all. If they stay red, then we'll know that McCain's 11th-hour economic arguments and scare tactics - "John the Fear Spreader" - will have carried the day.
Fresh interviews, analysis, ballot measure stories and the latest polls, all at www.sovernnation.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Time Stands Still
My life is crazy busy. Yours probably is, too. Days whiz by. It's impossible to figure out where whole blocks of time go. Sometimes I yearn for the days when I had a mindless, menial job where I'd look up at the clock and watch the hands move in slow motion.
But with a week until Election Day, the presidential campaign feels that way all of a sudden. The campaign clock is M o v i n g. L i k e. T h i s.
Will November 4th never get here? We're in a holding pattern. The candidates are repeating the same arguments, over and over again. The polls aren't changing that much. The counting of ballots seems anticlimactic. The suspense is s-l-o-w-l-y draining out of what once was a scintillating race.
Candidates and their handlers know when they've lost. Despite his outward optimism, you can see that losing feeling on John McCain's face. He's going through the motions, but his campaign is collapsing around him. Sarah Palin is straining at the reins, already positioning herself for 2012. Her aides and McCain's are sniping at each other. She's ignoring the McCain team's instructions and talking points and veering from their prescribed message. The former Romney aides who jumped on the McCain bandwagon when their own man's crashed and burned are already undermining Palin, to bolster Romney's chances against her the next time around. The Republican National Committee is withdrawing advertising dollars from states where McCain can no longer compete, and is spending some instead in places he shouldn't have to defend, such as Montana. Some within the RNC are even debating whether that's good money after bad, and whether those dollars would be better spent defending imperiled Congressional seats instead.
Can anyone gaze into the future right now and really see John McCain standing on the steps of the Capitol, delivering that Inauguration Address on a clear, cold January morning? Or striding into the House Chamber to a standing ovation to give his first State of the Union speech? No, when you close your eyes and picture the next president in those defining moments - it's Barack Obama you see.
Does this mean it's really over? Well, no I suppose not. Something weird could happen. All the polls could be wrong. The country could be even more racist than we thought. Obama could admit he's a Marxist.
But reason and experience tell us that next Tuesday's results are all but set in stone now. This is shaping up as the biggest Democratic landslide in more than 40 years. The Democrats will have 58, maybe even 60, seats in the U.S. Senate. Nancy Pelosi will preside over perhaps a 100-seat majority in the next Congress. Barack Obama won't just win the presidency - he may have a mandate, or what passes for one in an era of bitterly contested, razor-close elections.
When this election began, each party's presidential candidate mapped out his path to victory. The problem for John McCain is that he's painted himself into a corner. He has only one escape route, and it's narrow, and daunting. He must hold every single state that George W. Bush won in 2004, and if he loses even one big one, or two smaller ones, then he must wrest Pennsylvania from the Democratic column. That's why McCain and Palin are spending so much time in Pittsburgh, and in the rural, rednecky areas between Philly and Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, new routes to Electoral College triumph are opening up for Barack Obama like spokes from a crossroads. His initial strategy was to defend all the states won by John Kerry four years ago, and somehow capture one of McCain's big ones, or two of his smaller ones. Now he's got multiple options: he could win Virginia and Iowa, and clinch the presidency. Or he could take away Ohio. Or maybe Florida, plus North Carolina. Or he could lose all of those, but win Indiana, Colorado and New Mexico. Or how about parlaying blood-red Nevada, Missouri, Montana and - gasp - McCain's home state of Arizona into a stunning victory?
Okay, if that last scenario happens, then it's a landslide, and Obama will have won every other state I just mentioned. Which could actually happen. Obama is comfortably ahead now in Virginia, Iowa, and, in some polls, Ohio and Indiana too. He's narrowly ahead in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, and he's catching McCain in Montana and Arizona. He's neck-and-neck in Florida, North Carolina and Missouri.
All that's left is for the Big Clock to strike Poll Closing Time one Tuesday from now. If Obama wins big, he could have more than 270 projected electoral votes once the polls close in the Mountain states - around 7pm California time, 10pm on the East Coast, even while Californians are still voting. If some of those Eastern states are too close to call, or if McCain closes the gap in the final days, then it might take another hour or two to settle things.
In the meantime, we will cover whatever developments there are, order the pizza for Election Night, put up our big maps, and wait.
It will all come too soon for John McCain. It can't happen fast enough for Barack Obama.
N.B.: You might want to check out our story about robocalls, their illegality in California, and the sexy one that's got a Bay Area Republican candidate for Congress in hot water. Also, the latest polls of course, updated every day, and much more at www.sovernnation.com
On Election Night, I will live blog as we go, with constant updates, results, calling of states, etc. - as soon as someone shows me how to do that!
But with a week until Election Day, the presidential campaign feels that way all of a sudden. The campaign clock is M o v i n g. L i k e. T h i s.
Will November 4th never get here? We're in a holding pattern. The candidates are repeating the same arguments, over and over again. The polls aren't changing that much. The counting of ballots seems anticlimactic. The suspense is s-l-o-w-l-y draining out of what once was a scintillating race.
Candidates and their handlers know when they've lost. Despite his outward optimism, you can see that losing feeling on John McCain's face. He's going through the motions, but his campaign is collapsing around him. Sarah Palin is straining at the reins, already positioning herself for 2012. Her aides and McCain's are sniping at each other. She's ignoring the McCain team's instructions and talking points and veering from their prescribed message. The former Romney aides who jumped on the McCain bandwagon when their own man's crashed and burned are already undermining Palin, to bolster Romney's chances against her the next time around. The Republican National Committee is withdrawing advertising dollars from states where McCain can no longer compete, and is spending some instead in places he shouldn't have to defend, such as Montana. Some within the RNC are even debating whether that's good money after bad, and whether those dollars would be better spent defending imperiled Congressional seats instead.
Can anyone gaze into the future right now and really see John McCain standing on the steps of the Capitol, delivering that Inauguration Address on a clear, cold January morning? Or striding into the House Chamber to a standing ovation to give his first State of the Union speech? No, when you close your eyes and picture the next president in those defining moments - it's Barack Obama you see.
Does this mean it's really over? Well, no I suppose not. Something weird could happen. All the polls could be wrong. The country could be even more racist than we thought. Obama could admit he's a Marxist.
But reason and experience tell us that next Tuesday's results are all but set in stone now. This is shaping up as the biggest Democratic landslide in more than 40 years. The Democrats will have 58, maybe even 60, seats in the U.S. Senate. Nancy Pelosi will preside over perhaps a 100-seat majority in the next Congress. Barack Obama won't just win the presidency - he may have a mandate, or what passes for one in an era of bitterly contested, razor-close elections.
When this election began, each party's presidential candidate mapped out his path to victory. The problem for John McCain is that he's painted himself into a corner. He has only one escape route, and it's narrow, and daunting. He must hold every single state that George W. Bush won in 2004, and if he loses even one big one, or two smaller ones, then he must wrest Pennsylvania from the Democratic column. That's why McCain and Palin are spending so much time in Pittsburgh, and in the rural, rednecky areas between Philly and Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, new routes to Electoral College triumph are opening up for Barack Obama like spokes from a crossroads. His initial strategy was to defend all the states won by John Kerry four years ago, and somehow capture one of McCain's big ones, or two of his smaller ones. Now he's got multiple options: he could win Virginia and Iowa, and clinch the presidency. Or he could take away Ohio. Or maybe Florida, plus North Carolina. Or he could lose all of those, but win Indiana, Colorado and New Mexico. Or how about parlaying blood-red Nevada, Missouri, Montana and - gasp - McCain's home state of Arizona into a stunning victory?
Okay, if that last scenario happens, then it's a landslide, and Obama will have won every other state I just mentioned. Which could actually happen. Obama is comfortably ahead now in Virginia, Iowa, and, in some polls, Ohio and Indiana too. He's narrowly ahead in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, and he's catching McCain in Montana and Arizona. He's neck-and-neck in Florida, North Carolina and Missouri.
All that's left is for the Big Clock to strike Poll Closing Time one Tuesday from now. If Obama wins big, he could have more than 270 projected electoral votes once the polls close in the Mountain states - around 7pm California time, 10pm on the East Coast, even while Californians are still voting. If some of those Eastern states are too close to call, or if McCain closes the gap in the final days, then it might take another hour or two to settle things.
In the meantime, we will cover whatever developments there are, order the pizza for Election Night, put up our big maps, and wait.
It will all come too soon for John McCain. It can't happen fast enough for Barack Obama.
N.B.: You might want to check out our story about robocalls, their illegality in California, and the sexy one that's got a Bay Area Republican candidate for Congress in hot water. Also, the latest polls of course, updated every day, and much more at www.sovernnation.com
On Election Night, I will live blog as we go, with constant updates, results, calling of states, etc. - as soon as someone shows me how to do that!
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