A NIGHT TO CHANGE THE WORLD

The big election diary

With
R D Kernohan in Edinburgh
Rose Galt in Cumbernauld
Professor Andrew Hook in Glasgow
Alan Fisher in Washington DC

10.00pm, Edinburgh
I am filling in some of the waiting time reading about the life of Wallenstein by Golo Mann (son of Thomas). It is a reminder of the way that so many dazzling triumphs set in train events that end in tears.
R D Kernohan

11.00pm, Cumbernauld
Still an hour before the first polling station closes. My daughter who has just returned after 10 years in America has been giving me some wrinkles about US elections. First up is the importance of the swing states: Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania among others. For instance if Obama were to take Indiana – one of the early declaration states – then we would be heading for a Democrat landslide. If McCain won, however, it would be disappointing but not devastating for Obama. Are you still with me?
     Her other main point was not to put too much stress on exit polls, because they exclude early voters. It seems that vast numbers have already voted. States can make their own electoral rules (like excluding black voters from the polling booths?) so some don't allow early voting (eg New York and Pennsylvania) while others count at different times.
     My brother is in Maine with his brother-and sister-in-law, Ian and Judy, and will send me bulletins throughout the night or as long as he can keep his eyes open. Here's the first:
     'People in various parts of the US are reporting receiving emails saying the election has been postponed until tomorrow. Given the wall to wall TV coverage, you wonder what good (or bad) those sending the emails think it will do. But then I heard that Judy's mother got a message of this sort and, possibly because she's 87, was worried enough to check it out with I and J.'
Rose Galt

11.00pm, Glasgow   
Newsnight Scotland, true to form, abandons the US election and regales us with another account of the Scottish banks and Edinburgh's future.
Andrew Hook
 
11.30pm, Edinburgh
Even with polls still open and no proper results, I am already tiring of commentators warming up with talk of a 'historic vote for change' and the 'first black President' (for some of them have temporarily set aside the politically correct 'African American'). Of course they are bound to, for facts are chiels that winna ding. But two points can be missed.
     Any good Democrat ought to win this election, even without the financial crisis and looming recession, for the Bush administration never recovered from the mishandled aftermath of the Iraq war and defeat in the mid-term congressional elections. And Obama's successes, against Hillary and in dominating the campaign with McCain trying to catch up, were possible because black America had already broken the barriers. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, even Tiger Woods, made it possible for Obama to aim for the top.
R D Kernohan

12.20am, Glasgow     
Rightwing journalist Christopher Hitchens – brother of even more rightwing tabloid journalist Peter – denounces the Republican campaign and Sarah Palin in particular. Is a sinking ship being abandoned?
Andrew Hook

12.30am, Cumbernauld
Oh my God! No result yet in and already there's rumours of electoral irregularities in Virginia. Apparently not enough voting machines were ordered and the turnout has been 75%. A 106-year-old black woman in Chicago has voted for the first time in her life.
     Alan emails to say that the Democrats are running high in the traditionally Republican areas of Indiana – one of McCain's must-win states.
     BBC does nice graphics and they also manage to get the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens on. His remarks about Dubya's mental decline are probably libellous as well as hilarious.
     But no real results yet, only two 'calls'. Given the past fiascos of calling too early, the networks are much more cautious, so it probably means that McCain has Kentucky and Obama has Vermont. No surprises there, methinks.
Rose Galt
 
1.00am, Edinburgh
As early results trickle in I switch channels and also try the internet. The BBC seems not bad but the best bet is CNN, although the sheer complexity of its coverage of congressional and gubernatorial elections makes it hard to take in everything. But Americans seem reluctant to emphasise local swings from 2004 and very cautious about exit polls, perhaps because they've burned some fingers in the past. However as I write there's an analysis of Indiana counties which suggests a marked swing to Obama from Kerry's showing last time. Then comes something similar in Virginia and Florida.
R D Kernohan

1.14am, Glasgow   
Elizabeth Dole has lost her Senate seat in North Carolina. Likewise Sununu in New Hampshire. This is amazing. My mind goes back to September 2007 and the opening days of the Democratic primary campaign in New Hampshire. A sign on the Dartmouth College campus read Stop Sununu. They have. The irony is that once upon a time New Hampshire, full of Robert Frost-like New Englanders, was your archetypal Republican state with its motto Live Free or Die...
Andrew Hook
 
2.00am, Edinburgh
And so to prayer. My evening prayers have been understandably delayed. But my prayers for the next President of the USA have to be in two kinds, one of which sets my instinct at odds with my intellect. I have no problem praying that he will be sustained and well guided, for I have experienced once or twice an extraordinary sense of being supported by the prayers of other people, known and unknown to me. But my instinct is also to pray that he be preserved from harm and spared from the murderous fanaticism which killed Lincoln and Kennedy (inter alia) and nearly killed Reagan. That instinct is more powerful than my doubts, but my reason tells me that God, who devolved such power to humanity and offered it a pattern, is now disinclined to supernatural intervention with the course of nature and consequences of free will. Maybe I should also be praying for the mentally unstable and for the bodyguards.
R D Kernohan

2.00am, Glasgow  
Minnesota called for Obama. I think of my friends Jim, Jeannie, Joe and Mary in Minneapolis-St Paul. They have waited years for this moment.
Andrew Hook
 
2.10am, Cumbernauld
Both Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – the only two Democrat states that McCain had any chance of winning – have been called for Obama. Looks like it's all over for McCain and if Indiana goes Democrat, it certainly would be.
     Florida is also looking good for Obama at the same time as honest Republicans are looking grim. Electoral college votes are running 76 McCain to 175 for Obama. The magic figure is 270.
     Some factoids: 97% of all African Americans in Georgia have voted. The choice of Palin was described by a Republican activist as a 'goof-up'. A what? I suspect a euphemism.
     My cat Hamlet fell asleep at about 11.30 and has been snoring loudly ever since. What a critic!
Rose Galt

2.22am, Glasgow      
John Bolton, the neocon Bush sent as his ambassador to the UN, has a spat on the panel with a reporter at the Republican HQ. Bolton defends Sarah Palin because she was needed to enthuse the Republican base. The reporter replies that the choice of Palin turned off moderates and independents. What this points up may well be the dilemma that McCain failed to resolve.
Andrew Hook

2.30am, Washington DC
The first big swing state has been called for Obama. There's a huge cheer from supporters as Ohio is given Democratic blue. People near me say the night's over and Obama's won. It's hard to disagree. Ohio has voted Republican in every post-war Presidential election except when it voted for Kennedy in 1960.
Alan Fisher

2.50am, Washington DC
The projections are coming very quickly now. And most are for Obama. Texas has gone for McCain. That would have been expected.
Alan Fisher

2.51am, Glasgow
Bill in Florida writes: 'Hooray!...Wow! It will be Obama! What an amazing night, given the history of race in this country. I think most of the rest of the world will be pleased that the US has regained its senses.'
Andrew Hook

3.10am, Cumbernauld
The magic figure has not yet been reached, but Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa have all been called for Obama. Nothing yet from Indiana which would clinch it.
     Live TV is pretty ruthless at times. Two of Dimbleby's guests were John Boulton, a former ambassador under Bush, and the historian Simon Shama. The contempt they held for one another was palpable.
     The correspondent in the USA hopes that I can't resist informing the waiting world that the senior senator from Georgia is a right-wing fundamentalist called Saxby Chambliss. He added that it sounded like a sexually-transmitted disease.
Rose Galt

3.30am, Washington DC
Two of John McCain's senior aides say what we're all thinking: 'there is no path to victory given the results so far'. This election is almost over.
Alan Fisher

4.00am, Washington DC
Barak Obama is to be the 44th President of the United States. His projected victories have carried him over the threshold and he will be the next resident of the White House.
     Each election of a US President is an historic moment, but this is a true moment in time. Just 40 years after Martin Luther King told the world he had a dream, 40 years after blacks were restricted on where they could go and what they could do, an African American has won the White House. The victory annoucement came almost immediately the polls on the West Coast closed. California and Washington states were going to go Democrat and that was enough.
     There are around a million people in Grant Park in Chicago and the result has sparked scenes of celebration and delight.
Alan Fisher

4.09am, Glasgow
Peter in Massachusetts writes: 'So all in all, it looks like a very successful day for Democrats. I would like to think that this is a sign that a majority of Americans now see the problems in Reaganomics – the economic crisis may have contributed to such a shift in thinking. But perhaps it's just another reaction (delayed by about eight years in my opinion) against George Bush.'
Andrew Hook

4.15am, Washington DC
John McCain has called Barack Obama to offer his congratulations and to concede defeat.
Alan Fisher

4.18am, Washington DC
John McCain is addressing his supporters in Arizona. His words are warm and gracious. He has promised to work with the new President to get the country moving and he's called on all his supporters to do the same.
Alan Fisher

5.00am, at the White House
Hundreds of young voters are gathered outside the White House to celebrate the Obama victory. I walk among them and their joy is obvious. Speaking to a few they talk about history and change and new beginnings. Very few of them look over 25. This is truly a victory for a new generation.
Alan Fisher

5.10am, Washington DC
In Chicago, the President-elect is speaking. He's promised to be honest and to listen 'especially when we disagree'. 'This victory is not the change we seek, only the chance to make that change.' He has called for a new spirit of patriotism across the country. And the crowd couldn't love him more.
     Barack Obama came to public attention with a speech at the Democratic convention four years ago. Then they thought he was the future. The future is now.
Alan Fisher

5.23am, Glasgow
Jan in Texas writes: '...euphoric enthusiasm as we await just now Obama's speech in the wake of McCain's concession an hour ago...a very conciliatory and forward-looking grace note...Obama finally again willing to speak of hope and yes we can. All of us scared to death that he'll be shot...'
Andrew Hook

7.00am, Edinburgh
Got up to check the result and heard replay of Obama's victory speech. As such things go it was pretty good – Lincoln from Illinois, the American Dream, and echoes of Martin Luther King. The energy and the eloquence are real but I worry about the weight of expectations that now fall on him. A lot of people are going to be disappointed – if not soon, certainly later.
R D Kernohan

7.24am, Edinburgh
Stayed with Radio Scotland to see how their Thought for the Day coped, given the BBC's passion in recent times for scripts to be cleared well in advance and stuck to. It was fine, but I had been doing it I'd have wanted two scripts cleared: one that was cautious and hedged about enough to let Obama's name be put in or taken out as necessary and one that from the start assumed he would win and looked at that undue weight of expectation and at the consequences of overwhelming black support and very marked white hesitation. And I would have prayed again for him, as I do.
R D Kernohan

7.45am, Cumbernauld
I don't quite believe it. To wake up to the realisation that the Bush era is almost over and that America has a black president. There will be thousands of individual stories circulating this morning on the blogs because this election was the first of the YouTube era. Why did McCain lose? Was it only the Bush effect or the novelty of a black president?
Here's a list to consider:
Bush
Generational change
A candidate who enthused the young and got the black vote out
A candidate who ran strongly among the college-educated who seemed to want a president with a fully functioning brain: I wonder why...
Palin and what her selection said about McCain
And, of course, the economy stupid!
Rose Galt

9.34am, Glasgow
Gioia from Italy writes: '...the majority of people I know are totally enthusiastic...I spent the night in front of the TV, divided between hope and anxiety...the same I guess shared by people around the world. Obama is everything Bush is not...I feel we can trust him.'
Andrew Hook

10.00am, Edinburgh
McCain emerged with honour. His one real mistake was Sarah Palin, who from the start was exposed to ruthless, predictable assault and battery from the all-too-liberal media. Maybe the Republicans should have saved her for consideration in 2012. Their poor showing in the congressional elections will add to their difficulties ahead. They will want a new prophet (or better still, a prophetess) but conditions will make it hard for one to emerge. The Mormon Mitt Romney at 61 might still have a future but he's no more an Obama than he is a Brigham Young. I suppose there will be chatter about the Austro-Californian bodybuilder but he's still rightly ruled out.
R D Kernohan

10.30am, Edinburgh
There's too long to wait for the inauguration, though before Roosevelt's time it was even longer. A constitutional change by agreement might be appropriate there for future elections.
R D Kernohan

10.30am, Glasgow
Postscripts. The position in the Senate is still not clear. The results in Alaska and Minnesota have not been declared. But a Democratic 'supermajority' seems unlikely. A final point. Obama's triumph has a special message for us Europeans.  And it involves much swallowing of humble pie. We can no longer condescendingly dismiss Americans as backward, unintelligent, blinkered, Bush-loving conservatives. As of today the boot is firmly on the other foot. With a black president, the USA is once again in the vanguard of democracy. How long will it be before any European country elects a non-white head of state or prime minister? How long? You tell me.
Andrew Hook

Biographies

R D Kernohan OBE is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. He is a former director-general of the Scottish Conservatives and a former editor of Life and Work, the Church of Scotland magazine.

Rose Galt is past president of the Educational Institute of Scotland and of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland.

Professor Andrew Hook was Bradley professor of English literature at Glasgow University. He has lectured extensively in the United States and among his publications are 'Scotland and America 1750-1835' and a literary life of Scott Fitzgerald.

Alan Fisher is UK correspondent of Al Jazeera and one of Britain's most travelled foreign correspondents.

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