Chicago loves its Democratic native son CHICAGO -- If there were a classic B-movie about the giant purple blob of hope and change threatening to take over Washington in January, it might be called It Came From Chicago.
On a gorgeous Indian Summer Sunday, two days before Election Day, the Windy City isn't living up to its name at all. From down Lakeshore Drive, the glinting cityscape in its balmy haze looks a lot more benign than its early caricature of butcher's blood and wise guys.
In Hyde Park, the leafy, lefty enclave where the Obamas live and where Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, there are hardly any lawn signs because it is so sewn up both as a slice of the party's base and as the candidate's personal base.
'A MADHOUSE'
Jean Smith, 68, a home health care provider, said her biggest concern for tomorrow is turnout. "It'll be a madhouse. There's been a lot of early voting here but it's still going to be crazy."
With some experts predicting the highest voter turnout in a century and early voters already posting record numbers and record-long waits, the odds of the madhouse being national, not just local, could be pretty high.
At the Treasure Island supermarket, bookkeeper Nacole Tate, 36, has a hard time thinking of one McCain voter she knows. "Oh, yeah. I have an uncle who told us the other night he'd already voted for McCain and we couldn't believe it. He said he was worried about Obama taxing the rich. It didn't make much sense because this uncle never seemed too rich to us."
This is such a Democratic town that John McCain felt sure enough it wouldn't lose him any votes to run a fright ad in September decrying the "Corrupt Chicago political machine."
It's hard to imagine a Canadian candidate slamming an opponent's hometown, but Canadian campaigns are nowhere near as brutal and "the corrupt Calgary political machine" just doesn't have the same ring.
That old Chicago stereotype of Cook County math and, per the McCain ad, dubious political machinery may have been permanently overwritten by the culture of this campaign.
NO ZEN GARB
It's impossible to run a campaign as anything other than what it is because the operation is always part of the story and the Chicago-based brains behind the Obama operation weren't just sporting Zen garb.
They ran against traditional campaigning by eschewing it for something less reactive, more grassroots, less tactical and stunningly free of neurosis (and I say that as an utterly neurotic observer).
Studs Terkel, the great Chicago storyteller who died last Friday at 96, once famously said of his beloved adopted hometown, "Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It is the most theatrically corrupt."
It would seem impossible for anything that comes next to dwarf the unprecedented epic drama of the past two years. But if the sequel comes from Chicago, it may not live up to that old reputation, either.
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