Sunday, January 27, 2008

Saturday 1/26/08 We Shall Overcome

Despite an old fashion backyard wompin' stompin' thumpin', John Edwards vows to carry on. You know it's not going to be a good night when a minute after the polls close, the networks declare your opponent the winner.

We rolled into Jillians (Edwards HQ) around noon. Setup wouldn't happened until 2pm but the satellite trucks were already circling. There's two things most important with live coverage. Prime riser location and a short cable run. We got one out of two. In fact, none of the Raleigh tv stations was assigned riser space. It's bad enough when you forget one of us. We're usually pretty good about working each other in, but when you forget all four of us, that's fightin' words.

There were always two comments on my report cards. Short attention span and doesn't always play well with others. You can't expect much if you show up at the end of the campaign trail, but by god we've been here for two weeks. And you know I made sure they knew it. Eventually everything was worked out, but the me and the girl coordinating riser space exchanged the "evil eye" all night long.

Overall, the night went exceptionally well. Usually when you are set and ready to go two hours before the event kicks off, Murphy's Law creeps in and ruins the night. Not tonight. Everything went smoothly. In fact, we even had time to drop Tim's news vehicle off at Goodyear and have his brakes serviced. We were turning heads during the week as we grind to stops throughout the capitol city. Brake pads and two rotors later, he's back in business.

Edwards came out around 9:30p with his concession speech. He pledged to carry on. How long is the big question. Some believe he can still pull enough delegates to influence the national convention. That's worth a cabinet position.

As for us, we're headed home Sunday. Tim's voice is all but gone. He has the next week off. His vocal cords need it. I'll take Monday then it's back to the old grind. That's the one disappointment about covering a story this big. After it's over, you're back on general assignment, covering city council, crime and the drought.

See ya in 2012.

MB

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