Yale on the Trail

Olympics gymnastics gold medalist Shawn Johnson is here at Invesco Field and just appeared on the podium to rehearse the pledge of allegiance. (Photo: The Associated Press)

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By Thomas Kaplan
DENVER, 1:49 p.m. — Every once in a while as he walks through the United States Capitol, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio is pulled aside by a security guard. “They say, ‘Who do you work for?’” Ryan said.
But the 35-year-old Democrat doesn’t mind. His relative youth, he says, is a political advantage […]

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DENVER, 2:20 a.m. — On stage before a throng of sweaty youth, Representative Kendrick Meek of Florida pulled a microphone close to his mouth. He had already emphasized the importance of registering to vote. Now, he said, it was time to welcome “the Fall Out Boys.”
Close enough. The hundreds that filled the Ellie Caulkins Opera […]

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By Thomas Kaplan
DENVER, 2:23 p.m. — This winter, the musical artist known as will.i.am was feeling blue. His single album had flopped. He had a falling out with his manager.
Then came the song that changed it all.
Six months after the Black Eyed Peas frontman gave the campaign of Senator Barack Obama a shot in the […]

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By Thomas Kaplan
DENVER, 11:14 a.m. — This may be the Democratic National Convention, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few Republican interlopers in town. And one of them has a message for Elis.
Former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina (left), a senior aide to Senator John McCain, convened a press conference Monday with four supporters of Senator […]

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By Nick Bayless/Staff Photographer
Traveling to such a political hot spot as South Carolina, I expected to run into fellow reporters covering the campaign trail. However, I wasn’t really expecting to run into them in line at “Five Guys Burgers” at 7:30 a.m. in the Washington, D.C., airport.
That’s where I met Kevin and Sreya, a […]

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By Amanda Eckerson ‘07
In the last few days of any campaign, regardless of your party, a virus passes around the volunteers and organizers on the ground. It isn’t the flu, because they’ve been working hard. It isn’t strep, because they’ve been phone banking for hours. It’s a vicious case of Gidoudavote (pronounced Get-Out-The-Vote). Common side […]

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NASHUA, N.H., 12:38 p.m. — Excitement is growing over a candidate who once didn’t seem to have an ice cube’s hope in hell of getting a vote in New Hampshire.
“A saying that a lot of Ron Paul supporters have,” says Pennsylvanian Ron Paul campaigner Jim McDaniel, “is that ‘Dr. Paul cured my apathy.’”
Paul’s support on […]

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NASHUA, N.H., 11:42 a.m. — Typically, fourth graders are more interested in their Game Boys than the world of politics, but here in New Hampshire, even the young’uns get a chance to vote.
Virginia Drew, the Director of the Visitor’s Center at the Concord statehouse for more than twelve years, has pioneered […]

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JERSEY CITY, N.J., 4:22 p.m. — We’re in! All it took was flashing the YaleID. No questions, no being subjected to bomb-sniffing dogs.
First observation: There are nearly 100 video cameras here. Are there even that many stations?
The crowd, mostly, is young and Hispanic or black. “Fired up, ready to go!” they are chanting.
- The Yale […]

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NEW HAVEN, Conn., 2:31 p.m. — In New Hampshire, Senator Barack Obama seemed to be the darling of students, who flocked to his rallies and cheered for him as if he were a rock star. To young people, he was supposed to be a candidate who represented a new generation of politics, a voice […]

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HANOVER, N.H., 12:51 p.m. — Today might as well be a holiday at Dartmouth College.
With presidential elections — and the primaries that go with them — coming once every four years, Dartmouth students typically get only one opportunity in their college lifetime to experience the spectacle that is the New Hampshire primary.
For the university’s 4,000 […]

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GERMANTOWN, T.N., 11:13 a.m. — Hillary Clinton is struggling to lock in the votes of a demographic that American may have once thought was a given — women, especially the younger ones.
CNN reported this morning that in their latest New Hampshire polls, Clinton trails Barack Obama by two percentage points among women in the state.
Why […]

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HART’S LOCATION, N.H., 4:30 a.m. — It is the land of moose crossings and low, clinging fog; a place, in the immortal opening words of Twin Peaks, where “an orange light still means slow down.”
But Hart’s Location, N.H. has attracted the attention of the nation every four years since 1996 when it restarted the tradition […]

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DES MOINES, Iowa, 2:45 p.m. - “It’s like the morning after a party,” Iowa State Republican Party Exectuive Director Chuck Laudner says, surveying the phone banking room that looks like a fraternity ripped through it. “Everyone just picks up and goes home, and we’ve got to clean up.”
And that’s just what it is: the morning […]

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