A Party That Stretches All Around the Block

Obama Supporters in Pennsylvania Make It A Special Occasion

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 4 -- This is Obama country, needless to say, a place where high African American turnout and high student turnout from Temple University have come together to create -- dang, is that the end of the line?

So be it. Sharron Benjamin is beaming.

"It could be 8 o'clock tonight and I'd still be standing here," says Benjamin, 61, at 7:45 a.m. She's been waiting more than an hour, since before the polls opened.

A young woman skips by, pumping up the crowd with a song that goes "Oh, oh, oh, Obama, oh, oh, Barack Obama!"

"Go on, girl," Benjamin says.

Long before Obama takes Pennsylvania, our day begins at 7:04 a.m., when the poll opens. No, our day begins at 5:45 a.m., when the first voters arrive. 5:45! Temple students, excited to vote. (One of them even takes a camera-phone picture of Obama's name on his voting machine, for posterity's sake.)

The Marie Dendy Recreation Center, named after a community organizer, has basketball courts next to it and a swimming pool that is currently empty, save for a few brown leaves. Everyone who's run elections here before keeps talking about the swimming pool -- how if the line goes out the door and up the stairs and around the corner and down the block all the way to the pool, that's a measure of good turnout.

By the time they open the front doors, the line is already at the pool.

It's a long line, it's a slow-moving line, but it is, for the most part, a very happy line. It's a party, to the extent that waiting as much as three hours in occasional rain can be a party.

"Little over two hours."

"But that's all right."

"Mmmm-hmm."