Prediction: Tennessee is going to be challenged. It’s kind of hard to run a good election when a tornado runs through your state, which has quite possibly screwed with results. I’m not sure if there’s any precedent for this, so there’s a potential for this to get interesting.
Not a lot of results are in, but based on exit polls, people are predicting:
86% of Delaware (home to… lots of corporations) is reporting, with Obama ahead 51% to 44%
9:22: Kansas and Tennessee are both right around 15% reporting, but Clinton has an overwhelming lead in both (74:26% and 59:30%, respectively.)
9:26: Alabama has only 18% in, but Obama has 67% right now. MSNBC just called it.
9:28: 58% for Hillary, to 38% for Obama, in Massachusetts per MSNBC. I’m not sure if they called it, but I would.
On the Red side, Arkansas has been called by CNN for Huckabee (59% to McCain’s 23%), even though only 4% of precincts are reporting.
9:30: West Virginia’s quick… 100% in. Huckabee won with 52%, to Romney’s 47%. Massachusetts has also been called by CNN for Romney, 52% to McCain’s 40%.
9:33: MSNBC has called New York, New Jersey, and Illinois for McCain. Alabama is 40$ McCain, 38% Huckabee, but MSNBC is calling it for Huckabee. He’s got 59% in Arkansas.
In Georgia, MSNBC is calling it a three-way tie right now for the Republicans.
9:36: Idaho has only 9% in, but is showing Obama leading overwhelmingly (73% to 23%). He has a more narrow lead in North Dakota, 54% to 43%, with 26% reporting.
9:40: Connecticut is close, but Obama leads 50% to 48% right now, with 43% of the results in. No one’s daring to call it one way or the other right now.
9:41: A compatriot reports that Boylston, MA went for Ron Paul.
9:43: Howard Dean, interviewed live on MSNBC, has just called Romney “The candidate of change. He’s changed his mind on almost every single issue.”
9:47: Tennessee, reported on MSNBC and CNN, has closed down some polling locations as a tornado blew through Kentucky and Tennessee.
10:05: MSNBC suggests that Obama’s leading in Utah. I haven’t seen results yet, though.
10:10: Huckabee is speaking live now, and is talking about how he’ll be in office in under a year, and how much he looks forward to putting his “Out of Business” sign on the IRS.
10:19: Well Kansas has sure changed. 64% are in; Obama’s winning 72% to 28% now, and MSNBC has projected it for him.
10:24: MSNBC is saying Barack and Hillary have 6 states each right now.
10:25: CNN’s exit poll data for Massachusetts suggests an overwhelming female turnout, 58 to 42%, in the Democrat primary. It was almost the exact opposite in the Republican primary, 57% male to 43% female.
10:27: 72% in, but MSNBC has called for Obama in Connecticut, 50% to 47%.
10:32: Minnesota is Obama’s, 64% to to 34% right now.
10:43: Huckabee’s taken Georgia, per MSNBC.
10:44: Very few results are in from Colorado yet, but Obama has a sizable lead there right now, 65% to Hillary’s 34%.
11:02: North Dakota, per MSNBC, is Romney’s. Minnesota is going to Romney so far, but Ron Paul surprised me by getting 16%. More interestingly, 21% in North Dakota went for Ron Paul, too.
11:11: California’s been closed for 11 minutes. Results haven’t really come in yet in numbers. MSNBC shows Obama as having taken 11 states thus far, whereas Clinton has only taken 6.
11:17: Arizona went to Clinton. California’s being led by Clinton right now, but there are so few results that it’s still showing 0%.
11:20: California’s at 2%, but early results are that Clinton has a strong lead (57% Obama, 32% Obama, Edwards has a surprising 9% of the vote… Good for someone not even in the race.) On the other side, McCain has a very strong lead over Romney.
11:25: Now Obama has 10 states, Hillary 7. Not sure where the error lies. Of course it’s too early.
12:05: Alaska’s coming in, and Obama’s winning by a landslide! Missouri’s incredibly close.
We’re hosting an Super Tuesday Party on campus. I’ve got three TVs on, and I’m going to experiment with the “liveblogging” fad here, at least until I lose interest in posting here and get caught up in cheering (or booing) here. Rumor has it that exit polls are showing a lot of races even closer than predicted. Tonight might be very interesting, and “tonight” might become tomorrow.
Tonight I went to an Obama rally in Boston. Or, more accurately, I tried to go to an Obama rally in Boston.
We took the T in, and noticed a couple people carrying big Obama signs. A group of people got on at the next stop, and chatted with the sign-holders. Pretty soon I realized that almost everyone on the T was going to see Obama. As we got closer, this become clearer and clearer, until truly everyone on the Silver Line with us was going to the Obama event.
Per the advice of the people carrying the signs (who we all assumed to be leaders of some sort, but, in actuality, were not–an interesting psychological exploration for another day), we got off two stations early. And were greeted by the longest line I’ve ever seen. We must have walked by literally thousands of people before we got to our line. It was essentially folded on itself three times, and each one must have stretched for close to half a mile.
What’s more, I’m only counting the people I could see. Where the people “ended” was around the bend from the T stop. It turns out that we weren’t even halfway there; where Obama was speaking was several blocks down the road.
We got there before 7:30, initially confident that getting there that early would guarantee us a spot when the doors opened at 8. 8 o’clock came and went, and we had hardly moved. 8:45 and we’d moved up to the second line. Around 9:30, we were even with the T station, freezing cold, and only newly aware of the fact that we still had a long way to go. Rumors were circulating that the building was near its capacity, so we decided that it was pretty unlikely that we’d make it in, so we decided to cut our losses and leave.
Inside the T station, we found a steady stream of people making the same decision. The train we got on (actually a long bus that drives around in a tunnel… I don’t get it either) was jam-packed, and I ended up standing right next to the driver. “Why did you leave so early?” she asked. Early? It was 90 minutes after the doors opened. “The Transit Police said that he wasn’t going to take the stage until 11.”
Eleven? Sure enough, on our way back we stopped in a restaurant to eat. The news cut to a live feed shortly after 10:30, when John Kerry was on stage talking about Obama. I’m sad I didn’t get to see him, and yet thrilled at the turnout. I’ll try to get some pictures up tomorrow, but pictures really don’t do the crowd justice. It was enormous.
One of the things that rocks about New Hampshire is the so-called “retail politics,” where politicians have to get out and work to convince us that we should vote for them. Running TV ads and blowing Iowa and New Hampshire off doesn’t work, as Giuliani proved.
Last weekend, we went to a house party in Merrimack (hosted by a fellow ham, actually), where a few dozen people came to hear Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick speak about Obama. If you look at the US as a whole, this is a terrible proposition: the governor of Massachusetts takes an hour out of his day (well, probably more like three, if you account of travel time and all) to talk to thirty or so people? And yet this is what it takes.
Governor Patrick, by the way, is an awesome guy. He came around and talked to each person in the room. I told him I was going to school in Massachusetts, and he thanked my mom for “loaning” him to them. He seemed to genuinely care.
He has this incredible way of, when talking to you, making it seem like you’re the only person in the room. Here’s the governor of Massachusetts, coming up to someone’s house in New Hampshire, and talking to my mom and I as if he’s an old friend.
He spent a good deal of time just mingling, before he finally addressed us as a crowd and talked about Obama. He kept that brief, and then asked us a lot of questions. At one point, he was talking, and happened to say something along the lines of, “And I’ll tell you why I–” right as the home phone rang. Being the awesome person he is, he added, “And I’ll tell whoever’s calling,” and then picked up their phone.
“Hello, this is Governor Patrick.” I don’t really know what the person on the other end said, but I can only imagine they were somewhat confused. “We’ve got quite an enthusiastic crowd here for Obama,” he said, before asking the caller if they supported Obama. “No? Well then I’m afraid whoever you’re calling for isn’t home,” he joked before handing the phone over to the home’s residents.
One thing that I find oddly fun is thinking about possible Pres-VP combinations.
Some that come to mind are obvious: Clinton-Edwards, Obama-Edwards… Each has its own nuances that are neat to explore. But there’s another reason I think it’s interesting. In the business world, if you have a fragmented market–many sellers in a market all competing–it makes sense to try to merge some of the small guys to become a powerhouse. (Obviously, you can take this too far and become an anti-competitive monopoly.) Where this tactic is especially important is when the markets are bad. (We’ve discussed at length whether Ford and GM should merge.)
I think the Democratic race is fragmented. (Republicans, too, but in a different way right now.) We have three candidates all attracting substantial support. I have to wonder what would happen if, say, Obama somehow convinced, say, Edwards to be his running mate. Would they form a powerhouse?
There are a lot of combinations that are laughably improbable. I don’t think we’ll ever see {Clinton, Obama}-{Romney, Giuliani}. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum, and I think {Clinton, Obama} fans would be turned off that they’d picked {Romney, Giuliani} as a running mate, and vice versa. But I do like the idea of bipartisan couplings. I also don’t think that an Obama-Clinton (or Clinton-Obama) ticket is likely. They’ve spent so much time at each others’ throats that I can’t see it working.
But here are two that I find, to quote Kucinich, viable:
Obama-Richardson: They complement each other well, and, in my opinion, are both awesome candidates. Richardson is far behind in the polls, and thus doesn’t really stand a chance of getting the nomination; I’m far from the first to talk about him being in it for VP. Obama has Senate experience; Richardson has gubernatorial experience. Obama doesn’t have much foreign policy experience; Richardson has heaps of it. Obama brings an exciting, fresh perspective; Richardson brings decades of solid experience. (I’m not implying that Obama has no experience, nor that Richardson is ‘stale’–neither is true.) And neither of them are white, which is neat in a way.
Obama-Huckabee: Hear me out! Of the Republicans, I think Huckabee is my favorite. I certainly don’t agree with every position of his, but there are two things I really like about him. One is that he’s a good, honest guy. I think anything he does will be because he thinks it’s truly the right thing to do, not because it’ll make him rich. I think Obama-Huckabee would be the “cleanest” Administration in history. (Not in borderline-racist “clean and articulate” terms, but in “actually fighting for the American people and not doing anything crooked” terms.) And the second thing is that I love the way he views his faith–a call for him to do good on Earth. A religious, conservative Republican against the death penalty and in favor of helping the poor? Wow-a-wee-wow! There are some big differences between them, and I don’t know how reconcilable they are. But there comes a third benefit, too: done right, I think a bipartisan running ‘couple’ attracts the most votes. A Republican who would never go for Obama-Clinton might be convinced to vote for Obama-Huckabee. Not to mention centrist independents.
It’s time! I’m going to go grab some lunch, but then I’m going out to cast my vote, run a couple errands, and then spend the rest of the day on Get Out The Vote activities. When the polls close at 8, I’ll breath a sigh of relief that I can sit down, but I think my nerves will be shot, too, as I go somewhere with my fellow supporters to watch the results come in.
New Hampshire residents, don’t forget to vote!
There was a whole round of new polls yesterday. Notice anything different? Polls are notoriously inaccurate, but Obama, just a week ago 10 points behind Hillary, is suddenly on top. As is pointed out on the site, we can’t rely too heavily on polls. But if a candidate is trailing pretty far in the polls and, in a week’s time, ends up as the front-runner, it’s a promising sign.
As an aside, they don’t show Richardson in the polls, but I’d be very interested to see how he’s done in the past week. He did great in last night’s debate: if I was an undecided I may well have latched onto him.
The work you do as a volunteer for a campaign, quite frankly, sucks. You call hundreds of people, most of whom hang up as soon as they learn why you’re calling. You hear the same stuff over and over. Those that are more involved than I am rarely sleep. It’s just horrible work. I treasure every minute of it.
We’ve been working out of the basement of a wonderful local family, as the official regional campaign headquarters got too crowded and too hectic. All the national people have apparently come in (for obvious reasons), leaving little room for volunteers. With heaps of papers strewn across the table in someone’s basement, one of the organizers asked me, “Is this grassroots or what?” as I walked in.
You meet a lot of people. I mean that in multiple ways. Today I met Deval Patrick (MA governor) in person and he talked to my mom and I for a moment, seeming to genuinely care. I’ve met so many volunteers for the Obama campaign, and they’re all over the place. At dinner last night we sat with a guy and his two young children, and with several adults. Several of the volunteers I work with are younger than I am, many still in high school. And today we worked side-by-side with a woman in her 60s. This is exciting.
And you somehow get access to The Grapevine. We were talking today about how Romney pays his volunteers. This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me: I’m doing my work for Obama because I feel so strongly that he’s the right man for the job. My point isn’t that he saves costs by having volunteers who are, well, volunteers. My point is that since I’m not being paid a dime for my work, there’s no incentive to do it but for the obvious one: to elect him. Some of my new partners have apparently come across a few Romney “employees” who don’t even support him. They do their work, but at the end of the day on Tuesday, their vote won’t be cast for Romney.
Not many people pick up when I call. I’m either calling from a phone whose caller ID shows a candidate’s name, or I’m calling from my own phone, in which case I block caller ID data out of paranoia. (I don’t need some nut who’s had one too many calls coming after me.) And I really don’t blame them–I don’t pick up the phone unless I know who’s calling, either. But the one thing that excites me is that the people who pick up aren’t stupid by any means. You can’t just read some stats to them and swing their vote. They’ve either made up their mind and can articulate exactly why, or they’re undecided and ask tough questions.
This is what politics needs to be about. In New Hampshire, politicians can’t get away with reading us a prepared speech about what they want to talk about. We control the conversation, and we talk about the things that affect us. And the candidates who won’t do that don’t make it out of our state with ratings intact.