BOSTON -- After a year of record-breaking fundraising, record independent expenditures by outside groups, and what Democratic National Committee (DNC) general election manager Michael Whouley dubbed, just a week ago, “the best grassroots organization across the country that any Democratic nominee has ever seen,” the record-breaking voter turnout and record-breaking numbers of early voters on election day gave way, at the blurry end of a very long, roller-coaster ride of an election, to the most banal of conventional wisdoms and the decisive re-election of president George W. Bush.
“I am a great critic of conventional wisdom,” conceded Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart around 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, “but occasionally it's right.”
As predicted, in the end it all came down to Ohio and Florida. Reliably Democratic Hawaii and New Jersey again voted Democratic. Young voters once again failed to materialize at the polls in numbers that could move an election outcome. Economic models predicted a Bush win, and the majority of Americans in every poll that asked about it said they expected that Bush would retake the White House. Just as the foreordained frontrunner won the race for the Democratic nomination after a long and unpredictable campaign, so, too, the early favorite for the presidency won office. Despite heroic efforts, John Kerry, like every sitting senator and northern Democrat who's sought the presidency since 1960, did not win. The incumbent in a time of war, a southwestern former governor, was returned to the White House.
If every there was a year where it looked like precedent might go out the window, this was it. The president's persistently low approval rating and the nation's high wrong-track numbers, coupled with the president's controversial war in Iraq and spate of job reductions concentrated in the industrial Midwest, left considerable room for doubt about his re-election prospects. Democratic 527s were spending record sums in new organizations for the first time, matching the Republicans dollar for dollar. The Kerry-Edwards campaign and the DNC raised historic sums and made historic efforts. The rise of the liberal blogosphere and new Democratic organizations helped beat back the Republican noise machine in September and October. Kerry bested Bush in the three presidential debates. Minority groups, such as Arab-Americans, abandoned the president in droves. Democratic lawyers fanned out to swing states to help at polling sites and potentially contest any close states.
The night began on a high note. All day long, national exit poll data had shown Kerry leading in the majority of swing states. Around 7 p.m., former Wesley Clark spokesman Matthew Bennett was in the press room at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, chatting up members of the media and smiling the biggest, clearest smile I'd seen him give in the past ten months. “There's an element of schadenfraude,” he said, thinking aloud about Democratic joy on hearing the exit poll numbers. “Watching the annoying, cocky, highly-overcompensated Republican operatives from Karl Rove on down -- if we end up winning -- watching them eat it is most entertaining.”
The sweetness of the impending victory made the possibility of an eventual loss that much more sour. “The problem now is that all of us have expectations,” he said. “There's not a Democrat in this town who doesn't feel we're going to win. If we don't, it will be crushing. But, we've had crushing before.” The night was young.
Outside, the scene was chaotic by 8 p.m. Out of an abundance of caution, newscasters still weren't calling states in the solidly Republican South. At 8:31 p.m. Virginia still hadn't been called and Bennett was outside telling a couple of Kerry supporters, “It's apparently close in North Carolina because of young voters.” Inside the hotel, Lockhart had just told the press pack: “The biggest surprise was the 18 to 25 year olds, how strongly they came out.”
Across the country, young people did turn out in record numbers -- but so did everybody else, diluting their impact. Younger voters certainly turned out in force on Copley Square. By 9:15 p.m., the throng of thousands, pressed body to body, smelled of liquored breath. Thousands of people with passes -- and without -- had come to see John Kerry and the Black Eyed Peas and in search of Bruce Springsteen, who some erroneously believed would be performing. A designated press entrance clearly labeled on the evening's badges had been eliminated, forcing reporters to fight their way through the crowds to enter or exit the site. Dozens of Boston Police Department members in black riot gear–like outfits (minus the helmets) were brought in to eject the un-ticketed from the plaza in front of the metal detectors, where they blocked egress and entrance. “I'm supposed to go on the air. I'm gonna get fired if I can't get on the air,” cried out a Canadian TV reporter stalled by police blockade at the only entrance, where hundreds competed to be allowed into a tiny slot between metal barricades. “Terrible,” muttered a FOX News cameraman from Chicago, desperate to get to his press station. “Real bad -- so unorganized.” It was raining. Carole King was singing, “You've got a friend.” The evening's sourness was beginning.
Back inside the Fairmont, NBC announced exit poll data showing only 17 percent of the electorate was younger voters this year -- the exact same percent as in 2000. “In terms of states won, nothing has changed since 2000,” Tim Russert was saying. Pennsylvania was called for Kerry, the only one of the big three electoral vote treasure troves he would win. James McNulty, the former mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was watching the returns in one of the receptions at the Fairmont for donors and supporters. He gave Teresa Heinz Kerry credit for the voting outcome in the state. Her campaigning in Pennsylvania, which her late husband represented in the Senate, “had a significant effect on western Pennsylvania,” McNulty said. “Philadelphia was going to be Philadelphia no matter what. She helped carry Pennsylvania very significantly and so did her sons.” Bush made 44 visits to the state, to little effect.
Kerry senior adviser Mike McCurry reappeared in the press room from his “undisclosed bunker location” -- the campaign's boiler-room -- soon after it became clear that the exit poll results for Florida weren't being borne out by the actual voting results. He was quickly surrounded by a throng. “At the end of the day, we win,” he said, still confident as Florida began, in the vote totals, to slip from grasp. “I'm not sure what day it's going to be.”
The flowers back by the food station where the traveling press had loaded up on plates of roast beef au jus and all manner of side dishes had been dyed purple. So had the blooms in the reception rooms and throughout Kerry event rooms in the hotel. It was a small touch, these unnaturally lavender roses and weirdly purple sweet-pea blossoms with burgundy greenery in little vases. But as state after state turned out to not really be swingable, after all, it seemed symbolic, somehow. All had all been dye-dipped to be a color that they actually weren't.
“The needle has not moved since four years ago,” Tom Brokaw announced at 12:10 a.m.
McCurry and Lockhart returned. The campaign was “monitoring the result that will be critical to determining the outcome,” McCurry reported on the Ohio situation. “We're getting very good results from our organizers county by county.”
“We still have more work to do through the Upper Midwest, New Mexico,” Lockhart added, as if there was, at that late hour, any more that could be done that the campaign hadn't already tried. McCurry left the stage whistling softly to himself as he walked down the aisle past the press stations, holding his head high and looking straight ahead like a Rodgers and Hammerstein character.
Outside, the throngs were dispersing into the rainy streets, their expectations as deflated as the Kerry-Edwards balloons lying abandoned in the hotel ballrooms. And yet people comforted themselves with the knowledge that this had been the likely outcome, all along. “Everyone said it was coming but I tried to believe it wasn't,” said Laura Bevilacqua, a student at Boston Conservatory, standing in the early morning drizzle. “I'm so sad right now.” Erica Tunnicliffe, a Boston high school teacher, also sought refuge in predictability: “It's kind of expected I think that it's coming down to the wire,” she said as she left Copley Square. Around her, men and women talked percentages on cell phones. Inside the press center, reporters had already calculated the percentages and found that no matter if there were 250,000 uncounted ballots in Ohio, Kerry was going to be unable to make up the gap and win the state.
A reporter had asked Lockhart about this, noting how it looked certain that closing the gap in Ohio was not going to be possible. “Well,” acknowledged Lockhart, “you just said it.”
Stacks of Kerry-Edwards T-shirts out front were drenched with rain, buttons reading “Hot Chicks Dig Edwards” misted with moisture. “This sucks,” said Corey Myton of Laguna Beach, Ca., a first-time voter. It would be another hour before John Edwards took the stage at 2:30 a.m. and promised that “every vote would count and every vote would be counted.” He looked flawless, as if it were mid-afternoon and not the wee hours of the morning. He thrust his fists in the air, giving the thumbs-up sign. After he left, a photographer motioned to the crowd to make the same gesture. They willingly obliged, then streamed out into the night.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
