It was so cold here four years ago, when the temperature here briefly spiked to 9 degrees or so, my colleague and road buddy Nancy Gibbs exclaimed: “It feels like Miami!” Today, it’s what your grandmother would have called “pneumonia weather,” with the temperatures so balmy that I spotted a network technician out in the melting snow wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
This surely is contributing to what promises to be record-shattering turnout, though I think we all got a clue that was going to happen anyway, given the traffic jams that surrounded so many candidate events in the past few days.
This is also the first time I have run into so many people who have come here as political tourists. I just saw “Obama Girl” wandering the lobby of the Radisson, where all the networks and countless radio shows have set up their bases of operation. Surprisingly few people seem to be noticing her, what with all the chaos around them. Speaking of celebrities, the Obama campaign also confirms that Larry David has shown up at their headquarters and has been making calls on their candidate’s behalf. Guess it just isn’t the kind of atmosphere in which anyone is curbing his enthusiasm.