Revelers count down to Obama’s victory at a watch party hosted by the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees

Correspondent S. Dawn Casey asks people on the street outside Grant Park in Chicago, IL, why Senator Barack Obama would be a good pick for President of the United States. (2:48)

George Washington University students and community members give perspective on today’s presidential election. (1:50)

 

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Various voters explain why the prefer John McCain to Barack Obama (0:59)

 

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Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader gave a few choice words on the election, emphasis on “few”.

In an act that was part satire and part protest, Nader gave a press conference in which for the first portion he would only respond to reporters’ questions with one word answers, mocking what his campaign describes as the media’s reliance on sound bites.

When asked for one word to describe Obama, Nader responded “clever”, and described the amount of money the Obama campaign has spent as “disgusting”. When questioned what the major policy difference between Obama and himself Nader answered “corporations”. When asked what promises Obama wouldn’t keep Nader replied “change”, “hope”, and “peace”.

When asked about his impression of McCain, Nader answered with “clone” and “Bushlike”. Prompted to predict which Presidential candidate he would take more votes from, Nader responded “McCain” and when pressed to elaborate said “polls”.

Nader answered that the reason he ran this year was “justice” and that he would “maybe” decide to run in 2012.

In the second portion of the conference, Nader reverted to complete sentences and elaborated on his grievance with the media.

“It’s remarkable, when journalism studies this campaign that Joe the plumber will have received more coverage than a Nader-Gonzales campaign rooted in forty years of accomplishment and determination. This is one of the worst hours of the press.”

Nader also blamed the candidates for the coverage, saying that the repetitive nature of the candidates forced the media to resort to trivia.

“The candidates have wasted almost two years in redundancy and evasion and refusal to elaborate on what’s troubling most Americans on the community level.”

Various Washington D.C. voters explain why the chose to vote for Barack Obama. (1:16)

 

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Voting line in Alexandria, VA, originally uploaded by talkradionews.

The line at 6 AM, when the polls opened, contained over 600 people.

Photo by S. Dawn Casey

For the past year Americans have been losing friends, making enemies and in general, being their old partisan selves over the question of who is best qualified to lead us. We’ve argued about Iraq, taxes, the budget, whether one candidate is a Mini-Me of George Bush and whether the other candidate is an honorary member of the Weather Underground.

It’s now end game. On Tuesday, the shouting, arguments, innuendo, dirty campaigning and the all the rest comes to a screeching halt. We’ll get our president … and then … and then … and then what?

Everybody, left, right, center and unknown agree that this time, it really is different. The meltdown, the looming global recession and the foreign-policy mess have produced a world unlike any other that Americans have faced since the end of World War II. So my question is this: Given the magnitude of the problems we and the world face, does the winner of this presidential contest actually lose?

What is to be done? Signs right now point to a deflation, possibly global. Everyone senses this – falling stocks, home values and commodity prices, layoffs and the threat of double-digit unemployment now point to falling wages. Even the price of gold is down. Can falling prices be far behind?

Everyone knows that what the candidates argued about during their three debates – tax cuts, spending programs, something better for everyone, no exceptions – was not only beside the point, but was almost irrelevant to the problems we face. In truth, whether the winner is McCain or Obama (and I hope it’s Obama), no one knows for sure what either man is going to do about any of this. It’s as if the candidates were sleepwalking. In fact, by not demanding more answers about real problems, so were the media and the public. One might call this the Great Denial Election.

So does the winner lose? If we are headed into a deflation, something this country has not really experienced since the 1930s, what exactly will McBama do about it? More to the point, what can they do about it? It’s as real as rain and as serious as a heart attack – neither McCain nor Obama has addressed the economy on its own terms and proposed anything of substance. It’s as if both men studiously avoided having to tell us the truth.

And what is that truth? Perhaps that we’re up to our eyeballs in debt. Perhaps for a generation, we spent too much and saved too little, pinned our hopes to real-estate investments (something our grandparents never would have understood) or our 401Ks (something our grandparents would have warned us against doing.)

So whether it’s the man from Illinois or the one from Arizona, be prepared to be disappointed. Be prepared to, as the old Yankees used to say, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” Because for now, and maybe for the first term of whomever wins, we’re in a new age of austerity, limited missions, curtailed dreams and quite possibly, a declining standard of living.

It promises four years of heartache and broken hopes for Tuesday’s winner. And it will hit hard, because neither McCain nor Obama was able to look into that magic lens and tell the people the economic equivalent of what Winston Churchill explained on May 13, 1940 – that all he could offer the public was “blood, sweat, toil and tears” – especially the part about toil.

McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Rick Davis says that he believes a comeback is in progress for Sen. McCain. He also said Gov. Palin is still attracting big crowds at her speeches. (0:47)

 

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In a conference call today, McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Rick Davis said their campaign is “pretty jazzed up” as election day gets closer.

Davis stated that the narrowing polls between the candidates is evidence that “we fight back.” He felt the world was “witnessing one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary.”

Davis also noted that Gov. Palin (R-Alaska) has been generating a lot of excitement about their ticket. He added that the notion that she is hurting Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) “can’t be further from the truth.” He used the example that yesterday, Sen. Biden (D-Del.) had 800 people at his speech, while Palin had 20,000 people at hers.

Davis felt the polling in the last 10 days were the “best 10 days of polling since the convention.” He was also encouraged by the fact that Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) is campaigning in states like Iowa, which were previously thought to be easy victories for him.