The Night Obama Won

This isn't something I don't get, I just don't ever want to forget what happened that night.

I had always said that on Nov. 4, 2008, I was going to get drunk, one way or another. The day before, the probability that Obama would win the election, according to fivethirtyeight.com, jumped from where it had been hovering between 92-96% over the past few weeks, to 98.1%. Tuesday morning, it was 98.9%. McCain had simply run out of time, and the polls were not indicating anything breaking his way. I was optimistic, but nervous because you know how these things can go. I remembered 2004, when the early exit polls looked good for Kerry, before everything went to hell. This was going to be different, but better not to get too excited, just in case. I had a drink before I left work, just to take the edge off my nerves, but I knew it hadn't even started yet.

I was trying not to constantly hit reload on my computer with fivethirtyeight, or my RSS feeds, so I didn't get a chance to check until around 4:30pm PST. The news outlets had already called Kentucky for McCain, and Vermont for Obama. No surprises there. Indiana was too close to call, and that was a good sign. I never really expected Obama to win Indiana, but the fact that they couldn't call it for McCain right off the bat was nice. I had to go to a meeting at 5pm, but I kept checking the results on my phone, and I saw that they called Pennsylvania for Obama right after the polls closed. This was excellent news. McCain had spent the month of October trying desperately to make something happen in PA, and it didn't work. At the end of my meeting, around 5:30, someone said "Tomorrow we'll know who the new President will be" and I said that I thought there was a good chance we'd know tonight. My Republican coworkers seemed depressed.

I decided to go home after the meeting, and I listened to NPR on the way. The anchors were trying to make things sound a little less bad for McCain, but they had to be honest that things weren't looking good. A few more states had been called, no surprises, and some of the states McCain really had to win, like Indiana and Virginia, continued to be too close to call. Around 6:30pm, they called Ohio for Obama, and that was really the nail in the coffin for McCain. One of the people on CNN made a What If map that had McCain winning every state he could conceivably win (Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Utah, etc), and it just didn't have enough electoral votes. Obama really only had to win the Kerry + Gore states, and then just one more, and Ohio was that state.

When they called Virginia for Obama around 7:45pm, it was just gravy. It was indicating that the electoral map was going to be a lot bluer than anyone thought possible even a few months earlier. The people wanted change, and McCain (and probably especially Palin) wasn't what they had in mind. The west coast polls closed at 8pm, the networks immediately called California, Oregon, and Washington for Obama, and then came the magic words, "We project Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States." I sobbed. I put my face in my hands and I cried. I wanted to hold that moment in my mind.

I woke up with a hangover on Wednesday. It was all worth it.