Imagining a Day at the New Hampshire Primary

The New Hampshire Primary takes place today; it ought to be some pretty exciting stuff. So exciting, in fact, that I spent 10 minutes today imagining what it'd be like to be a reporter covering the scene today. Here are the notes from my hallucination.

At 6:00 AM, I wake up in agony. I pulled a muscle last night roughhousing with Wesley Clark. It was some sort of publicity stunt he concocted. We had agreed to no hair pulling, but once a gaggle of soccer moms gathered around our homemade ring in the Shoney's parking lot, he just had to bring out the big guns. I consider telling this to CNN.

7:15 AM, flapjacks with John Kerry. I prefer to call them pancakes. I told this to Sen. Kerry, who punched me in the stomach and then pointed to a poll that 54% of New Hampshire voters prefer the term flapjacks. He has brought some homemade syrup for the breakfast crowd, which leads to widescale nausea. Still, they appreciate the gesture.

At 10 AM, I'm off to a Howard Dean chili cook off. After standing in line for an hour with a bunch of pretentious weinerbiscuits and blog enthusiasts, I am served the angriest bowl of chili in the history of chilidom. When I ask for unsweetened tea, Dean unleashes a fearsome primal scream and instructs his minions to dismember me and hide the body.

Joe Lieberman has organized a lunch time breakdance competition in a predominantly African American voting precinct. It seems a little desperate to me, but he's really jazzed about it. Despite the fact that all entrants get a yarmulke with Joe's face on it, few people are showing interest. He convinces me to get out there and pop and lock with him for a few minutes. After he gets winded from doing the robot, he goes off on an hour long freestyle rap about his Medicare proposal.

It's 3 PM, and I'm at the meeting of the Concord Society for Creative Anachronism with Dennis Kucinich. I don't know what's sadder: the make-shift chain mail he assembled before he started his talk, or the fact that he just agreed to joust John Edwards. I feel bad for the guy, who actually has some good ideas. Still, if he continues to call me "fair squire", I'm grabbing someone's mace and going after him.

At 6 PM, Al Sharpton and I hit the cafeteria at the Ramada Inn in Manchester for some grilled cheese sandwiches. I ask him if he feels he'll be competitive in today's primary. "Is that today?" he says. "I gave up on winning that a few months ago. Now I'm just going around New Hampshire, rating hotel hot tubs. Did I forget to issue that press release?"

Posted by Cody at January 27, 2004 6:15 PM