It was morning in America and today over 169 million registered voters were about to be given the first opportunity to vote for an African-American as their head of state.
The sun rose over the Manhattan skyline and burst through our apartment window to signal that a new day was dawning on America. For the Road Trippers, it was the final day together after seventeen days on the road that had taken us from the gun toting, pickup-truck driving state of Texas, through the corn fields of the mid-west to the fall leaves of New England. We were now sharing an island with over 8 million New Yorkers and were about to embark with them, on the final journey that would be the political grand final day to end all grand finals.
However, in fine Australian grand final tradition, there was always one key player in the team than let his pre-match nerves get the better of him and returned home from the night before just as the morning sun was hitting the first New York skyscraper. The Doctor had played his road trip long and hard and wasn’t about to go soft on the eve of the election. Hey, if you’ve got a winning formula, why change it?
While the Doctor got some beauty sleep, the other four Road Trippers headed out onto the streets of the city to sample election day: New York style.
Skuzzlefark, donned his now traditional travel uniform of hiking boots, knitted fleece, appalling choice of tracksuit pants and map in hand and headed down to inspect the juxtaposition that is capitalism, consumerism and democracy and took to the streets around Broadway and Union Square. To find out more about Skuzzlefark’s day, he will shortly be releasing a travel book titled, “Flying by the seat of my parachute pants: Why do people look at me funny?”
Meanwhile JT, the Rabbit and the Don headed down to 57 Broadway, in the financial district, to the State Democrat Campaign Office to lend a hand. Before the boys could help Barack, a quintessential New York pizza was needed to give them the sustenance and stamina required for such a momentous day. Unfortunately, the three of them nearly got thrown out of said pizza restaurant on the corner of E 8th St and Broadway when the Rabbit attempted a half-arsed New York accent when ordering his pepperoni. Road Trip Rule No.7 – Don’t impersonate the locals, they could be packing heat.
Once the three boys arrived at the campaign office they walked out of the lift onto a floor that was buzzing with activity. They weren’t the only people to be offering assistance, the place was heaving with locals who had walked off the street in their morning break to make an hour’s worth of phone calls or hand out flyers. Once they filled our pockets, bags and every other orifice with Obama campaign mementoes they met a campaign volunteer co-ordinator, who suggested they head into the room where most people were making calls into the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio to get out the vote. This small room that seated over 800 phone bank volunteers had made just over 250,000 connected phone calls in four hours into Pennsylvania only the night before. The boys offered their time but hit a snag when they discovered that most off the street volunteers were using their own cell-phones.
So instead of going to jail, or at the very least returning to Australia with an employer greeting us with a large phone bill and instant dismissal, she gave them a bundle of flyers and vague directions of where to go to hand them out and sent us on our way.
So off they went in search of the subway and headed to the Bowery district to hand out flyers ready to fulfil our obligation to help deliver Barack to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the subway platform they met a woman who claimed to be a key fundraiser for the RNC in New York and had raised all the money for Mitt Romney’s failed primary campaign. As they all squished on to the subway, she was none too pleased with our Aussies for Obama t-shirts and the RNC Jump For Jesus Trampoline Centre gag on the back. However she couldn’t get too nasty, she was on a packed subway in Democrat New York. This was not her town.
They ascended from the subway to a neighbourhood that was in the lower east side and began walking north handing out our flyers to passers-by. The flyers had the location of all of the Democrat phone banking centres located in Manhattan for volunteers to go and make calls to voters in swing states. The Don, JT and the Rabbit's job was to walk up to complete strangers and ask if they were prepared to give an hour of their day to make some calls for Obama.
Of course if anyone tried that back home, you’d probably get your head punched in, but amazingly, the locals where quite receptive to it. So much so, the boys managed to send at least 40 people off to an Obama phone bank centre to help the great man. Surprisingly, some people had already made their calls at some point in the day, but were willing to go back again and make some more. I guess you don’t know if you don’t ask.
One old woman was so amazed to meet some young Australians helping her beloved Democrats that she invited the Don and the boys to come home to her place for an election night dinner party, she was serving meatballs and soup.
But the meatballs and soup had to wait. The three Aussie volunteers continued heading uptown into the East Village handing out the flyers. JT targeted attractive young women with his Hugh Grant looks, the Rabbit when he wasn’t on his blackberry targeted older voters and the Don found traction with non-English speaking midgets and the homeless.
By late afternoon, the boys put down their flyers and rested at our NYC local, Luca Bar. The Don did a quick interview with ABC radio in Adelaide and trotted out all the standard key lines, “this is the Kennedy election of our generation”, “this election is about Change” and “I’m sick of f***ing tipping these c**ts”.
While the Don mulled over what he just said to the fine people of Adelaide, JT and the Rabbit headed up to Midtown to meet some foreign affairs academic. The Don was soon joined at the Luca Bar by the rock star himself, the Doctor who had awoke from his morning/afternoon siesta (who quickly ordered a pint for breakfast), and Skuzzlefark who had returned from his day fresh with tales of meeting other New Yorkers that dig ripstop nylon pants with zippers.
By the time JT and the Rabbit returned from their intellectual verbal berating from the academic, the others boys had made new friends in the guise of the Luca barmaid and her fire dancing mate from up state New York. The Doctor who was quickly back on his feet taught the girls the finer parts of the Australian vernacular, while our hostess proceeded to give them and herself copious amounts of free wine. Guess where the boys were sitting? That’s right, at the bar. Have you people learned anything yet?
By this time it was 5pm and the bar, and surrounding establishments in the Village, began to fill up with expectant office workers ready to sit down with a quiet libation, some fine food and witness history take place before our very eyes. The owner of the bar had set up the TV and a rear projector, with CNN on one and MSNBC on the other. The Rabbit asked if he could change one of the TV’s to Fox for a laugh and he dutifully obliged.
By 9pm all the networks were putting Pennsylvania and its 21 electoral votes in the Obama column on the basis of exit polls! That’s right, not one vote had been counted and the polls had only been closed for two minutes. Over the next hour or so all of New England turned blue and Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida were teetering towards the Democrats. State by state, the electoral votes piled up on Obama’s side and it was only a matter of time before it was official.
So the Road Trippers, now including the Pink Pants Man, sans pink pants, jumped in a cab and headed across town to the Mansion. On most nights the Mansion is a nightclub in the Meatpacking district, but it had been converted into a phone bank centre for the days leading up to November 4. For tonight it was the main NY State Democrat close of polls function.
When the cab pulled up outside the location, the boys noticed an establishment right next door which will be all too familiar with those in the Labor Party back home. There it stood in all its glory, a venue so far away, yet a venue that is now burned into the lexicon of ALP history. A venue that took in a nerdy politician and ejected a leader of men, a man of the people, a man who would one day lead the great southern land. That venue was of course, Scores.
Unfortunately it was shut; maybe Scores were keen to put Bush behind them too and hope for change they could believe in. Anyhow, now wasn’t the time nor the hour for overpriced bourbon, fake breasts, overbearing perfume and innuendo-loaded humour.
The boys headed into the main area of the Mansion which was packed with campaign volunteers drinking, chatting and watching the coverage on the big TV screens. We headed to the bar and ordered a round of drinks that would have equalled the GDP of a small African nation, whilst the Don, who was fast becoming the media slut of the group, did another radio interview back home.
The Rabbit then set about scoping the place for the next adventure, only for him to return with passes that gained us access to the VIP section of the party.
Once the former slave state of Virginia and its thirteen electoral votes were declared Democrat Blue, all that was required was for the polls in California to close and its fifty five votes to fall in the Democrat column; it was now a fait accompli.
At about 11.30pm ET, CNN declared that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), the son of the Kenyan academic and a single mother from Kansas was now the 44th President elect of the United States of America.
Words cannot describe the feeling in the room at that point. To stop and look around at the Democrat volunteers who had worked so hard, some from the moment that Obama had announced his intention to enter the primary race back in February 2007 on the Springfield State Capitol, others who were probably voting for the first time in their life, to witness the shear elation and joy on their faces was a memory that will live long in the minds of all of us. African-American women and men openly wept, Americans of all backgrounds embraced and high five’d each other and standing amongst it all was six Aussies who were accepted into the Democrat family, privileged to witness and play a small part in changing a nation for all the right reasons.
It's impossible not to be swept up in the hyperbole of this stunning result. So much of a campaign's effort was to 'get out the vote'. To do that Obama campaigned not just for swinging voters but all voters in his broad church (hello Gilesy). All voters had a stake in his success – families, old and young, gay and straight, lunch-box Democrats, moderate Republicans, independents, the poor as well as the middle class and of course black and white. He appealed to the better angels of our nature, replacing self interest with national interest. The victory is so heavy with symbolism that some of its simplest meaning can be lost.
Obama broke the perverse nexus that existed between Republicans and white working class Americans who in the past voted to concentrate wealth in the hands of the super rich because of conservative Republican cultural values. Obama has changed the modern meaning of the American dream and restored the idea of America as a place of opportunity and equality.
Obama faces daunting challenges. With these challenges, there are strong historic parallels with Lincoln, FDR and Kennedy. To be sure, the challenges and expectations are impossibly high. But it feels that in just one day so much has already been achieved. Obama's victory has provided a shot of integrity and confidence that America has been crying out for. Everyone is proud of the nation's ability to right its wrongs.
No wonder Jesse Jackson wept tears of joy during Obama’s speech. 150 years ago a black man could be owned as a slave; just 50 years ago blacks weren't guaranteed a vote. Today, a black man born in that time is now the 44th President. We are moved by reports of ten year old black students in Bronx public schools telling of being woken up by their moms at midnight to be told the election had been decided and history made. When asked what this means for them one kid said "I can grow up and be whatever I want to be. Obama is our first black president but he won't be our last."
Yes He Can. Yes We Can.
