By Christi Parsons, Kathleen Hennessey and Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau –
CHICAGO — There was hope. There was a bit of dancing. There was a steady outburst of cheers and encouraging signs. But then there was that word, flashed on a massive television screen.
“Elected.”
With that, the Obama victory party, the Obama team, the scores of eager aides and supporters gathered in a Chicago conference hall let out a collective cry of relief. He would have four more years.
The call that officially started the party came earlier than expected. President Barack Obama had hardly settled into the Chicago hotel room where he, his family and his closest aides had planned to spend at least a couple of hours to watch returns.
But on this night, the anxious watching and waiting wouldn’t be necessary. This night was going their way.
Obama’s team had said it would, with confidence oozing from their remarks on the final days of the campaign trail. Republican nominee Mitt Romney just didn’t have enough votes in states where he needed them.
Obama’s campaign operation would overpower the GOP effort, they predicted. The president himself said early in the day that he was feeling good.
The campaign, a superstitious bunch, would be taking no chances.
The president spent his final election day as a candidate immersed in the established rituals and habits of his rise to the White House.
He woke up in his bed in his Kenwood neighborhood home. He conducted a dozen interviews with television stations in the battleground states, just as in 2008, and worked the phones with Obama for America volunteers like the community organizer he once was.
He played basketball with his buddies — a ritual left over from his epic battle for the Democratic nomination. He ate dinner with his wife, two daughters and his mother in-law. He waited — but not for long.
The timing of the announcement came as a surprise to the crowd at the Obama party, where many had been prepared to wait all night without a resolution.
As the win was announced, supporters screamed and hugged one another, waving American flags and snapping cell photos of the jumbo TV screens.
The crowd erupted again when Romney came on the screen, his words of concession drowned out by the cheers.
As Romney offered his prayers on behalf of the president, the crowd in the convention center cheered again — most enthusiastically when Romney said, “I believe in the people of America.”
For Obama, the day started with an email to supporters — one last missive from the organizer in chief about how a turnout operation works on the big day.
“Once you vote today, keep going,” Obama wrote in the note. “Get on the phone, get online — all day long, there will be something you can do to help.”
He included links to help people find their polling places and also to work a volunteer shift, all under a subject line that read, “Go vote — and forward this.”
Then he followed his own advice, heading to the Hyde Park office of Obama for America, whipping off his suit jacket and picking up a flip-style cellphone.
“Let’s get busy,” he told the campaign staffers around him, “we’ve got to round up some votes.”
