Mark Hertsgaard is blogging the 2008 Election day from Chicago for Vanity Fair, The Nation and Italian radio.
Here in Barak Obama’s hometown of Chicago, there is soaring anticipation, great anxiety and one giant absence on the eve of Election Day 2008. The possibility—at this point, probability—that the hometown hero will be elected president of the United States tomorrow is the number one topic of conversation among locals and visitors alike. “Oh, yeah, everyone’s pretty excited here,” said Tiffany, a heavy-set young African-American woman working the check-out counter at Walgreen’s downtown. “I think he’s going to win. And I think he’ll do a good job as president.”
Inside Obama’s national campaign headquarters on Michigan Avenue on Sunday afternoon, the twenty-somethings who seem to hold all but the very highest jobs in the campaign were carrying in crock pots and grocery bags filled with home-cooked meals—prepared by local supporters to fuel the kids as they turned in yet another 18 hour work day. The national polls point to a solid, perhaps spectacular, Obama victory on Tuesday, but none of the staffers I spoke with admitted to anything but a head-down race to the finish. “Barak told us the other day, ‘Anyone who’s feeling complacent about this election, I have two words for you: New Hampshire,’” said one, referring to the state whose primary election Obama was expected to win back in January but where Hillary Clinton prevailed instead, reviving her candidacy. “Now you hear those two words around here all the time,” the staffer continued. “When it’s two in the morning and you haven’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks and you want to go home, you tell yourself ‘New Hampshire,” and you keep going.”
Although virtually every desk on the 11th floor headquarters was full on Sunday at 5 pm as the campaign prepared last minute internet appeals and phone calling operations, the staffer (who cannot be named because the campaign press office had not approved our conversation) said that the headquarters was actually relatively empty, compared to the past few weeks, when space was so tight that campaign workers were crowding the aisles, sitting on the floor while working their computers. “Anyone who doesn’t have to be in headquarters at this point to do their job has been sent to the field to get out the vote,” said the aide.
Many of the staffers from Chicago have gone to Indiana, a quick thirty minute drive down Interstate 94, where Obama is running neck and neck with McCain in a state that hasn’t voted Democrat in a presidential election since choosing Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Indiana, where I myself will be going on Election Day, is also where the second, post-Civil War incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan was born. If Obama wins Indiana—and he has been campaigning hard there, not just in the traditionally Democratic Chicago suburbs of northwestern Indiana but in rural areas as well—it would signal not just the end of John McCain’s presidential ambitions but a historic shift in the direction of American democracy and perhaps the nation’s soul.
The anxiety one finds here comes in two forms: the first from Democrats who are afraid to jinx the prospect of an Obama victory by getting their hopes up too early; the second, more ominously, from African-Americans who say they are excited at the chance a black man will be elected president but often quickly add their fear that Obama might then be shot, especially if he attends the massive outdoor Election Night party planned in Grant Park, the downtown park beside Lake Michigan where Fourth of July fireworks and other city-wide are commonly held.
“I do worry about that, I do,” said Sylvia Wilson, an African-American college administrator from St. Louis in town for a convention over the weekend who is extending her stay a couple of days to be an eyewitness to history (and perhaps to Obama himself, since she too is staying at the Hyatt, where Obama will watch the returns on Election Night). “I’m old enough to remember the shootings of the 1960s—John F. Kennedy, Medgar, Malcom, Martin. They better have good security for him, that’s all I’ll say.”
And finally the giant absence: Studs Terkel, the author, activist and radio host who symbolized Chicago, died last Friday at the age of ninety-six, reportedly in his sleep. In his best-selling oral histories (Working, Division Street: America and especially Race—Studs introduced America to itself in all of its nuanced, rambunctious diversity; his portrayals of the fundamental decency of ordinary people gave us hope of a better day. “Redemption,” he answered a few years ago, when asked if there was a common theme to his books. “Anybody can be redeemed,” he added. “I’ve seen it.” On Tuesday, America has its shot at redemption. What a shame Studs won’t be here to chronicle it.