November 7, 2012

• How I Spent My Election Night

  Election Day/night could not be anymore different for me than it was four years ago. Back then, I was one of the lucky people to be in Grant Park when Barack Obama was elected president. You can read all about that night by going back to my post from Wednesday November 5, 2008. This year though I was not lucky enough to be at Obama headquarters in Chicago’s McCormick Place. I was going to have to watch the results of what promised to be a very close election from the comfort of my non historic home.

  I was planning on getting to work early to work overtime. So I set my alarm for the ugly hour of 5:40 in the A.M., early enough to account for a line at the polling place. The line wound up being non existent and for the most part, I was in and out. I got out of work right at 6:15 that evening and headed straight home. My plan was to watch the Chicago Bulls game and periodically check in on the election mainly on CNN but also across various networks. I like to contrast and compare the coverage between the different networks, especially the extremely conservative FOX News and the ultra liberal MSNBC. I tend to watch CNN more because they are only biased for themselves, always bragging about how great they are. So here is how the night unwound for me:

   

  • Started watching CNN right about 7:00, so far Romney had an early lead. The Bulls were taking on the surprising Orlando Magic in Chicago, so I put that on shortly thereafter. Things started off rough for the Bulls, it seemed like they were going to be in for a long tough night as well.
  • Midway through the first quarter, I turned the election coverage back on. Obama had a slight lead in the electoral votes while Romney was ahead in the popular vote. CNN was busy dreaming up all sorts of different scenarios while playing with their fancy technology so I clicked on FOX News. Boy, it is amazing how biased they are. Karl Rove was already mentioning how hard it was going to be for Obama to actually win the election and how even if he somehow managed to win, it would mean nothing because he wouldn’t have won the popular vote. I clicked on MSNBC which was yammering on about how tough it would be for Romney to win.
  • Now it’s about eight and the Bulls are struggling; they are looking lethargic and like they just don’t want to be there. Meanwhile, various networks had various totals as to who was winning the electoral vote, however they all had Obama losing the popular vote. On FOX, Karl Rove was busy pronouncing the death kneel for the Democratic party in America while at the exact same time on MSNBC, they were pronouncing the Republican party dead.
  • After halftime, midway through the third quarter, the Bulls were starting to heat up a bit as was the election. It seemed like the more results they showed, the closer the election got. Obama and Romney appeared to be within a point of each other in just about every state, especially the two important states of Ohio and Florida.
  • It’s now after nine and the Bulls start to really lay it on. Meanwhile, votes were coming harder and harder to come by for Mitt Romney. In fact, FOX had called Ohio for Obama which nearly made Rove pass right the fuck out. He than spent the better part of at least five minutes not only in a staunch state of denial, but also insisting that they not call Ohio yet until more of the votes were counted. Funny. 12 years ago when he was working for George W Bush he wanted them to stop counting votes in Florida when his guy was winning and now he wants to keep counting and counting and counting.
  • As it got closer to 10, it was starting to look like an Obama victory was inevitable. I watched the Daily Show and during one of the commercial breaks, clicked on the other networks to find out that Obama had won. Meanwhile, somewhere in the FOX studio Karl Rove probably ran around frantically looking under tables and chairs for Romney votes while sobbing uncontrollably.
  • Knowing what happened in 2000, I wasn’t going to stop watching until both candidates had spoken. On we went though until almost midnight when Romney finally gave his brief, yet gracious concession speech. I can’t blame the guy for waiting; shit after all he was running for president for five years and spent so much time and money that he owed it to himself and his campaign workers to be certain that he lost.
  • Finally at about 12:40 A.M. central time, Obama came out and gave a victory speech. At this point, I had been up for over 18 hours and should have probably been tired or ready to fall asleep but for some reason I was wide awake.

  So that was my election night. Well not MY election, but how I spent election night. Finally another election has come and gone and it only took two years to pick a winner.

  • 10:27 pm
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