And although I had been anticipating this day, I felt more a sense of relief and exhaustion than excitement after spending a draining week in a stranger’s basement working for Barack Obama. I was nervous — not about the outcome, but because I would soon have to drive a large white van filled with seven senior citizens to and from the caucus. (I had already spent a half-hour driving around Des Moines quite lost.)
I could not believe I was there. Standing with my friends, fellow interns on the campaign trail in Des Moines, Iowa, I was about to hear one of the most uplifting political speeches of my life from a man who, with his win in the Iowa caucuses just two hours old, was possibly on his way to the White House. After Barack Obama stepped up to the podium, in front of 3000 excited supporters, he delivered his message of a new American politics, one of healing, one of times of hard work and determination to come, with fundamental changes in our country in sight. We would do this together, he said. And as I stood there, all around me I could feel the history in the making.
The Left is accustomed to being labeled eternally idealistic not as an accolade, but an epithet. But every four years, the Democratic Party’s establishment enjoys labeling other Democrats naive. John Kerry said it about Howard Dean in 2004 and it stuck, leading to Dean’s demise. In this election cycle, Hillary Clinton, calling Barack Obama’s campaign a “false hope,” has thrown at him the word “idealist” hoping to achieve the same end.
If there is an Achilles’ heel in Barack Obama’s rock star presidential campaign, it’s health care. Poll after poll shows that health care reform is one of the top issues on voters’ minds, but poll after poll gives Hillary Clinton, not Obama, a double-digit edge on her perceived ability to carry out this job.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. 4:25 p.m. — Although most undergraduates have yet to return from winter break, Yale’s campus is already buzzing with campaign organizing in the run-up to what some have called “super-duper Tuesday” on Feb. 5, when 24 states are scheduled to hold their primary elections.
Hundreds of Connecticut supporters, grassroots organizers and campaign officials of Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for president convened this morning at Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center to urge locals to get involved in the Illinois freshman’s campaign in the remaining weeks before Connecticut’s primary.
JERSEY CITY, N.J., 4:00 p.m. — Reporters here are livid as a frantic Obama official tells us the fire marshall has said no more reporters can be let in. Well see about that!
A traveling television reporter from a major network calls it an “absolute nightmare.”
JERSEY CITY, N.J., 3:45 p.m. — While waiting on this endless press line I chatted with Charles Hannon, a Jersey City resident who was stationed in the South Pacific with the U.S. Navy during World War II (and later attended school in New Haven). Sixty years later he is calling himself a “veteran for Obama”
Why? Besides Obama’s support for G.I.s, Hannon says the country is “going down the tubes” and Obama is the “new-blood” candidate who can put America “on top” again, as it was in the late 1940s.
As an interesting side note, Hannon says he also likes John McCain — and would like to see the Arizona senator run in a general election with Obama.
JERSEY CITY, N.J., 3:20 p.m — The scene here in Jersey City, where Barack Obama is set to kick off his national tour in half an hour, is extraordinary.
Nearly 300 reporters are waiting on line, trying to push their way inside. At least a dozen live-feed satellite trucks from all the major networks line the steet. Thousands and thousands of Jerseyites, meanwhile, are wrapped around the sidewalks of this blue-collar city, many of them sure to be turned away.
The last poll here showed New Jersey to be decidely pro-Clinton — but this extravaganza may provide just the momentum Obama needs in the Garden State, where independents can vote in either primary come Feb. 5.
NASHUA, N.H. — Welcome to primary night in the Granite State. We are live from Nashua South High School, where Senator Barack Obama will speak tonight to supporters after the results from today’s primary come in. Our live blog is below.
OBAMA CONCEDES; CLINTON WINS NEW HAMPSHIRE
12:22 a.m. | We’re signing off. This place is still in shock.
11:06 p.m. | Clinton is giving her victory speech, but the sound doesn’t work here in the press room and no Obama staff can be found. Reporters are cursing, absolutely livid.
11:01 p.m. | In front of a screaming, clapping, chanting crowd, Obama congratulates Clinton but vows to fight on for change. Because he loves change! But beneath the deafening cheers, cheers that were supposed to convince a national television audience that Obama had not lost his momentum, was an palpable, paralyzing shock. Even as they clapped wildly, the faces of Obama’s supporters were empty.
In a final bit of painful irony, the rally ended, as most of Obama’s do, with Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”
An Obama victory in New Hampshire was supposed to be exactly that.
10:42 p.m. | U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-New Hampshire, is firing up the crowd before Obama speaks. “We stand together for hope. We stand together for change,” he said.
10:34 p.m. | THE AP PROJECTS CLINTON WILL WIN NEW HAMPSHIRE. The room here is silent, with all eyes fixed on CNN. In the next room, the crowd at the Obama rally is chanting, and I feel pity for them.
10:28 p.m. | “It could be a very long night,” says Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Who probably is not starving to death right now. And who probably is in a climate-controlled studio, not in a drafty gym.
10:27 p.m. | Edwards concedes to Obama and Clinton. “The goal is still in sight,” Elizabeth Edwards says. John says he will stay in until the convention, as we reported earlier this week.
10:20 p.m. | Obama is still at his hotel, his campaign says. The big question here is how the college towns will factor in when they report. They could tilt the scale toward Obama, his campaign seems to think.
10:13 p.m. | With 62 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton is up by three points.
10:03 p.m. | What if this is like Florida in 2000 and we’re here all night? I ask because, well, I am really hungry. They need to feed us! How can they keep us here and not feed us? At least if I were inside the rally, I could feast (my eyes) on the beautiful “Change” signage. Here in the barren press room, I feast on nothing.
9:57 p.m. | Weird. On the left screen is MSNBC, with no sound. On the right is the Obama rally. And over the speakers is the unmistakable voice of CNN’s Anderson Cooper ’89. Are they trying to confuse us?
9:56 p.m. | They just killed the sound on MSNBC in the press room. It’s bad enough they’re making the crowd at the rally listen to the Counting Crows. Why do we have to listen to it, too?
9:55 p.m. | 54 percent reporting; Clinton up by two points.
9:37 p.m. | Oh no! There is a 2005 Buick LaCrosse parked illegally here. It must be moved “immediately,” the loudspeaker booms. Where is our security? Stop having your dogs sniff my digital camera, Secret Service, and secure our perimeter!
9:35 p.m. | John McCain is getting destroyed over his soporific acceptance speech. That was so bizarre. We saw him speak two days ago in Salem, N.H., and he was fiery and alive as can be. Tonight, he looked senile.
9:32 p.m. | Exit polls show that of voters who decided for whom to vote in the last three days, the divide went 50-50 between Hillary and Obama. So much for Obama’s momentum, MSNBC says.
9:25 p.m. | The crowd keeps randomly bursting out in concerted cheers of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” here in Nashua, as if on command. Why? I don’t know. Do they need to practice chanting the word “Obama”? Quoth Allen Iverson: “Practice? We’re talking ’bout practice?”
9:21 p.m. | With 39 percent reporting, Obama has drawn within 3 percent — about 2,800 votes.
9:15 p.m. | With 34 percent reporting, Clinton still clings to a four-point lead.
9:14 p.m. | The media room here is a very odd place to be right now. The Obama rally is nowhere near ready to begin, and none of us have anything to do except watch MSNBC (and then post on our blogs whatever they report).
9:13 p.m. | McCain is delivering his victory speech right now. “Mac is back!” How cute. Somewhere, Senator Joe Lieberman ’64 LAW ’67 is smiling.
8:59 p.m. | Huckabee is conceding now. For his campaign, however, third place is not bad news in the slightest. “Frankly, we’re pretty happy with that,” Huckabee said.
8:56 p.m. | “It is good news, and we’ve been having good news for the past three days in New Hampshire,” Clinton adviser Ann Lewis said on MSNBC. “She’s talking to people about the difference between talk and action.”
8:55 p.m. | With 23 percent reporting, Clinton’s lead is up to six points.
8:50 p.m. | With 21 percent reporting, Clinton’s lead has shrunken slightly to four points.
8:47 p.m. | Mitt Romney has conceded the primary to McCain. He prefers to look at his devastating loss as a “silver medal.”
8:29 p.m. | With 13 percent reporting, Clinton has opened up a five-point lead on Obama.
8:25 p.m. | Remember when, this summer, everyone thought McCain was finished? When reporters confronted him and demanded to know when he planned to drop out? How things change!
8:18 p.m. | I wonder if the Secret Service would allow pizza delivery to the press filing room. Would the bomb-sniffing dog have to inspect it? And, if yes, am I hungry enough to eat pizza covered in bomb-sniffing dog slobber?
8:15 p.m. | CNN also projects that McCain will win the primary. The network also projects that former Senator John Edwards will finish in third place among the Democratic contenders.
8:12 p.m. | NBC News has projected that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, will win the New Hampshire primary.
8:05 p.m. | Connecticut Senator Christopher J. Dodd — who dropped out of the presidential race last week — has received 22 votes. Yet, he still trails fellow dropout Joe Biden, with 54 votes. Some people just can’t win.
8:04 p.m. | With 11 percent of precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 leads Barack Obama, 38 percent to 36 percent, according to The Associated Press. For the Republicans, John McCain has a nine-point lead over Mitt Romney.
8:01 p.m. | “So, it is not over … We don’t have any answers yet … It’s too close to call,” Keith Olbermann just said on MSNBC. Patience, grasshopper. The polls have been closed for all of 30 seconds.
8:00 p.m. | Polling places across New Hampshire close.
7:10 p.m. | Unlike the filing center at the debates Saturday night, the last time this many members of the news media gathered in one place, there is no food to be found here at the Obama HQ. There was, briefly, a few cases of bottled water, but those are long gone. I also see one empty package of Cheez-Its, its 12 individual packets nowhere to be found.
6:58 p.m. | The set-up for the rally itself is similar in style to that of Senator Hillary Clinton’s rally last night in Manchester — in other words, it is impressive. But we’re not actually in that room. In an adjacent gymnasium, the more than 300 reporters on hand will watch the rally via a large projection screen. Well, not a screen — the image is just projected onto the all of the gym. We also have a second projector displaying MSNBC’s coverage of the returns.
WEST CALDWELL, N.J., 9:36 p.m. — With about 2,000 votes separating Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton LAW ’73, CNN’s Anderson Cooper ’89 just raised the fact that the approximately 6,000 votes of Hanover, N.H. — the city that houses Dartmouth College, which is in session today — have not yet been counted. That’s more votes than the Clinton campaign expected to be casted today in the college town.
Dartmouth students, meanwhile, are expected to support Obama by a large margin.
In other words, if the Illinois Senator pulls through tonight, he may have Dartmouth’s quarter calendar to thank!
