First of all, I”m still undecided. This is in no way an endorsement of my views or the Guardian’s regarding the upcoming presidential election. That said, this evening after toiling away in the Guardian batcave I walked up the hill to Bloom’s Saloon on 18th Street where the Potrero Hill Obama contingent gathered to watch the results eek in from New Hampshire.
It was something of a mad house. The bar was more packed than I’ve ever seen it. The music was off and CNN was turned up loud. Silence fell as we listened intently to Obama’s speech, with the people standing around me clapping with the crowd on tv. (Which always strikes me…they can’t hear you. It’s purely cheering for the sake of cheering.) They listened carefully to Hillary Clinton’s speech as well, and as soon as she was done the room was thick with insightful criticism of her words and sentiment.
There were two distinct things I noticed from the experience this evening:
1. The crowd was truly a mixed bag. Young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino. You couldn’t pigeonhole this group, which is completely unlike a recent rally I attended for Dennis Kucinich where the crowd was distinctly white and old, and it felt strangely disconcerting to realize I was one of a small handful under the age of thirty in the gathering of 200 people. The group at Bloom’s really seemed more representative of America.
2. People were talking to each other. A LOT. And randomly – turning toward each other during commercial breaks, chatting about work and life or intently discussing the election. People caught wind that I grew up in New Hampshire and were seeking me out for inside information on which towns and counties were more liberal than others. It felt more like a very engaging mixer where everyone’s horny, and despite the second place results for Obama, there was a lot of excitement and momentum in the room.
I’m not sure what else to say about this, but I’ll add that the invite to Bloom’s showed up in my Guardian email and I got nothing from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or any of the other contenders for the White House. There’s definitely a movement here.