The northlondonhippy

Archive for November 5th, 2008

President-elect Obama just fin­ished speak­ing. It was pow­er­ful and mov­ing, he’s quite an orator.

His mes­sage was one of hope, for the future of Amer­ica and the world. He even addressed the rest of us, not in Amer­ica. That’s unprece­dented. The cur­rent occu­pant of the White House only made threats to the rest of the world.

I felt a bit sorry for John McCain when I watched his speech. I don’t think he is a bad man, I just think his poli­cies were bad. Peo­ple clearly wanted change and that wasn’t on offer from the Sen­a­tor from Arizona.

I hate to piss all over the party, but the feel­ing I have right now reminds me of the day after Tony Blair was elected the first time, back in 1997. Strangers smiled at each other in the streets, peo­ple seemed so happy by the prospect of change. It was really amazing.

And we know how all that turned out. Not well.

I think it will be dif­fer­ent with Obama. I hope so, anyway.

Obama has a lot to live up to. Many peo­ple will be dis­ap­pointed with him when he doesn’t turn all the water into wine.

The changes Obama has promised won’t hap­pen overnight, but they will hap­pen. We need to be patient and let him do what he can. Don’t be dis­cour­aged if the happy feel­ing you have today wears off.

Trust me, it will wear off. It always does.

But for today, just enjoy it. Bask in it. Revel in it.

For today, for the first time in the bet­ter part of a decade, things have never looked brighter.

That’s it for me, tonight. I hope you’ve enjoyed my sur­pris­ingly pro­lific live-blogging this evening. I’ve enjoyed being able to com­ment on actual his­tory as it unfolds.

the northlon­don­hippy
0535gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

They may have been an hour behind me, but the Amer­i­can net­works have now called the elec­tion in favour of Barack Obama.

That’s right, I beat every­one else.

This is a his­toric moment. I never thought in my life time I would ever see a black man elected pres­i­dent of the United States.

It’s an amaz­ing achieve­ment for Mr. Obama, and an amaz­ing achieve­ment for the Amer­i­can people.

No mat­ter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can’t deny the sig­nif­i­cance of this moment in time.

Or as Bob Dylan said a long time ago, “The times they are a changing”.

the northlon­don­hippy
0410gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

I can’t wait for the net­works to call the win­ner of this elec­tion, so I am doing it myself.

It’s 10pm east­ern time, 0300gmt here in north Lon­don and I hearby declare Barack Hus­sein Obama the win­ner of the 2008 pres­i­den­tial election.

Based on every­thing I’ve absorbed in the last half hour, there’s no way McCain could reach the magic 270 elec­toral votes.

Remem­ber, you read it here first, fuckers!

the northlon­don­hippy
0301gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Some­thing I noticed today, there were no pic­tures of Bush or Cheney voting.

Usu­ally, the incum­bent is seen cast­ing his bal­lot. Usu­ally, the incum­bent also speaks after vot­ing, offer­ing a strong endorse­ment of his party’s candidate.

This year is not usual in this regard as the incum­bent is so wildly unpopular.

It’s no won­der we haven’t seen much of him recently, and though he may not be cur­rently in anyone’s field of vision, he’s cer­tainly on their minds.

If any­one is respon­si­ble for the abysmal per­for­mance of the Repub­li­can party this year, its George W. (for What were they think­ing when they elected him twice?) Bush.

When peo­ple look back at the his­toric elec­tion of 2008, Bush will take a large slice of the blame. And that brain­less bimbo, Sarah Palin, who kept the inde­pen­dent vot­ers away from the Repub­li­cans in droves, will also shoul­der a healthy por­tion of blame.

the northlon­don­hippy
02:28gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

Penn­syl­va­nia has gone to Obama.

Appar­ently that’s a good indi­ca­tion of where the race is going.

Also, it is look­ing good in Florida, which as you may recall has been a prob­lem­atic state for the Democ­rats in pre­vi­ous elections…especially 2000 for poor ol’ Al Gore.

Even this close to a result, I am still ner­vous and unsure.

I’m still alter­nat­ing between CNN and FoxNews, though I def­i­nitely pre­fer CNN. CNN has been high­light­ing viewer reports of var­i­ous vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties across Amer­ica, with a really cool graphic map. The more orange an area is, the more they are screw­ing with people’s right to a free and fair vote.

And don’t for­get the holograms!

It’s just gone 9pm on the east coast of Amer­ica (0200gmt here in north Lon­don) and accord­ing to CNN, Obama is now lead­ing lead­ing McCain with about 3 elec­toral votes to one. That’s a pretty good mar­gin, let’s hope it holds!

the northlon­don­hippy
02:02gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It’s all too slow, they are being too con­ser­v­a­tive and cau­tious in their predictions.

Tell me who’s winning!

As of now, Obama is up, up, up!

All you need to do is look at the peo­ple at the two can­di­dates “vic­tory” ral­lies. In Chicago, where as many as one mil­lion peo­ple are expected, it already looks like one hell of a party, while in Phoenix, the gath­er­ing appears to be more like a wake.

At this point, does any­one really think McCain can pull this off? Even McCain him­self looked glum as he arrived in Phoenix a short while ago.

My tv view­ing is set­tling into a rou­tine, switch­ing mainly between CNN (who I think have the edge) and FoxNews, with the occa­sional stop on the BBC. SKY seems a bit slow and looks a bit cheap and the BBC is actu­ally doing a pretty good job, but the Amer­i­can net­works have the resources and speed to do the story justice.

And what a story its going to turn out to be!

the northlon­don­hippy
01:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

It might be closer than the pre-polling sug­gests, but I am already get­ting the feel­ing that its going to be a good night for Obama and his party.

I’ve been flip­ping between:

- FoxNews
– CNN
– MS-NBC
– SKY
– BBC

They all have giant sets and really whizzy graph­ics, espe­cially the Amer­i­can net­works. They’re all being cau­tious in their pro­jec­tions, which is sen­si­ble, but not very exciting.

CNN win on the tech­nol­ogy front, Wolf Blitzer is talk­ing to actual, life-like holo­grams of peo­ple in other parts of the coun­try. Spooky!

The key states at this hour remain too close to call, but that in itself could be telling us some­thing, as the key states in pre­vi­ous elec­tions were firmly in the Repub­li­can column.

The inter­net may be my per­sonal medium of choice for doing my own thing, but at heart I am a tele­vi­sion viewer. I’m split­ting my time between my desk­top com­puter and my tv, though as this thing heats up, I’ll prob­a­bly switch to surf­ing on my iPhone while I remain on the sofa. Like you needed to know that.

- the northlon­don­hippy
– 00:25gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008