Too Close to Call

Once again, no exciting narratives of my personal life. Sorry to disappoint you. Instead, I present the RealAudio archives of all of National Public Radio’s Election Night 2000 coverage, all ten hours of it. I can’t believe I didn’t know until today that this stuff was out there. (I’ve been hoping to find a videotape of NBC News’s election night coverage for a while.) You may think this is weird of me, but I love this stuff — I love reliving exciting events in the news, experiencing them again as they happen, minute by minute. I’ve always been interested not just in the news but in the coverage of the news. And I salivate every four years as I anticipate settling in front of the TV on election night, so you can imagine how excited I was this past November. I stayed up until 5 in the morning through all the twists and turns, my eyes glued to the TV, my stomach muscles twisted into a pretzel.

Listening to these archived NPR broadcasts, I can feel a mid-autumn chill once again as the days get shorter. I can see the brown crunchy leaves on the ground and the blue and red campaign placards mixed in with orange and black Halloween decorations on front lawns. Once again I remember how in October and into early November I’d check the Reuters tracking poll online every morning, having hoped that the debates would give Gore a boost, but in vain, seeing the candidates remain in an unmovable tie; but then, in those final three or four days before the election, hearing about Bush’s old DWI arrest and learning that undecided voters were tending to settle on Gore, and thinking to myself, holy crap, maybe he’ll actually win this thing after all; and then, on election night, seeing Gore win the coveted trifecta of Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and feeling happy and excited. Now that we’re six months into the Bush administration, it’s hard to remember that on November 7, Gore had an even chance and this thing could have turned out either way.

It’s amusing to hear Robert Siegel on the East Coast tell Elizabeth Arnold on the West Coast that she’ll still be reporting at midnight California time, while on the East Coast, he’ll be fast asleep by then. Hahahahaha. If only he knew.

Oh, by the way, if you’re thinking of running for president in 2024, you’ve already got competition. (Scroll down.)