By Sarah Fenske and Amy Silverman
The phone rang a little while ago, and it was a friend in the Amsterdam area. “So it’s over,” he said.
And we said, “What!?”
Here in the Frank Lloyd Wright Ballroom in the Arizona Biltmore, McCain is doing just fine. Big & Rich is playing “Raising McCain.” They’re calling Texas for the Republicans, and everyone actually still thinks they have a chance to win.
The media practically outnumber the plebes here, and people keep swarming us to try to check our laptops and iPhones to find out what’s really happening. The line for cocktails keeps getting longer. But they’re keeping a tight lid on information. And, seriously, most of the crowd doesn’t realize they’ve already called Ohio for Obama.
Now someone is onstage saying the race is dead even, but John McCain and Arizona’s junior senator and McCain’s water carrier Jon Kyl basically concede. Kyl complains that he’s lost several friends in the Senate to “the radicals on the left,” and, “It’s still too close to call!”
But by the end of his remark, he was urging the crowd, “Those of you who have passes should head to the lawn.”
A sure sign that a concession is near.
Even we've been invited to the lawn. It must really be over.
Now we’re in line to get on the lawn, and a woman behind us on her cell phone just said, “With any luck, [Obama] will be assassinated within a year.”