BARACK OBAMA!

We were on pins and needles about the general election all day. Bon took the day off and Emily worked from home. As has been our habit during the election we reviewed all the election web sites, particularly the polling sites to see if any new reports would give Obama any advantage. Bon went to a location in Chicago to make calls as I had done from home the previous day – mine all to Indiana. We all kicked around the house reading the newspapers and even once looking at the TV for any indicators.

Rob and Pat who had worked in the campaign from the early stages had invited us all to see Obama’s speech whatever the outcome in Grant Park at 8:30 p.m. in the evening. The speech was not expected much before 11:00 p.m. Emily went out in the early evening to get some groceries and came back with Obama shirts for us all. The weather all day had been spectacular for a Chicago November 4th. It was in the low seventies at its peak and it was predicted to be in about 55 degrees by the lake in Chicago. We put on a couple of layers just in case.

We caught the early election returns with Obama winning Vermont and McCain taking Kentucky before we left about 7:10 p.m. to walk to the Green Line. On the platform, a young woman began to chat with us excitedly about the election. She was going down to the Essex Hotel to meet her 12 year old daughter and watch the festivities (we hoped). She sat with us and chatted all the way; I listened to her and anxiously to my mp3 radio with one ear as they called Pennsylvania for Barack. This was a key state in the McCain strategy so it boded well. The mood seemed so friendly on the El. I called Rob and arranged to meet at Wabash and Lake. We walked there from the Randolph station and could see the boys across on the northeast corner. Scarlett soon joined us from her building there.

The boys walked us to 233 N. Michigan Avenue where Obama’s headquarters is located. The office was an incredible confusion of crowded desks, ad hoc wiring outlets and computers, with too many people for the space. We entered a room with wall-to-wall paper-laden tables scattered with laptops, where people watched a big screen projecting election returns. Obama posters, stickers and paraphernalia were all over the walls. Everyone was excited. Rob and Pat introduced us to some of their friends and we walked next door to their office, another table-filled open room, where we met the CTO, and many of their friends. Everyone was snapping pictures and tracking the results on laptops. A young man came up the hall and jumped into Rob’s arms and then was introduced. We then toured the incredibly packed floor seeing first the finance area (traditional fund raising across from “new technology” fund raising – an internal competition which the latter had dominated). Pat showed us into the server room which they had built. It was small with a powerful A/C unit directed at two and a half server racks packed with servers handling terabytes for media storage as well as e-mail and database servers.

We walked out of a hallway to the north side of the building where Plouffe and Axelrod’s offices were located. Burton passed by us passing two campaign workers who had just finished doing yoga handstands in the hall. On the east side of the building we saw the communications area, where press issues were addressed. Then we completed the circle meeting a young man who seemed to be a big backer of the “Brothers Chauncey.”