JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Good morning, everyone. We are live across the country taking the pulse of America as people stand in line to go to the polls. Andrea Bernstein is here, [LAUGHS] America’s Takeaway Political Director –

[ANDREA LAUGHING]

- America’s everything. You actually grew up in Gladwin, Pennsylvania, where that voter was from.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

I grew up in Gladwin, Pennsylvania. It’s where the word wasp was invented.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

They needed it? [LAUGHS] They needed it?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

It’s - Grace, Grace Kelly was from there. I mean, it was horse country. There was certainly not a Democrat to be found when I was growing up.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, she got us in trouble, I think, for campaigning –

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

But that was in ancient history -

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

- for campaigning for Obama there at the top. But it’s been amazing how many people at this America’s Exit Poll where they were talking to Adaora live down in Atlanta with voters waiting there, or people in Gladwin, Pennsylvania, are in a nonpartisan way telling us the story of what it means to stand in line and vote today.

JOHN:

Hi, my name is John. I’m calling from Washington Borough in northwestern New Jersey. Our polling place has lines running out all the way onto the street. This is something I have never seen before, and our town is only 6,000 people.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

That’s an amazing story. Thanks, John. Call us with the story of casting your ballot at 877-8MY-TAKE.

So as Americans go to the polls today, we mark the end of what may have been one of the most exciting presidential campaigns in recent memory. And, of course, it’s also been a campaign that’s been infused with all kinds of new technology and new ways of transmitting information and raising money, new mechanisms for doing all of that.

Adam Nagourney, political reporter for The New York Times, has been there from the very beginning. Adam, thanks for joining us.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

Sure. Thanks for having me.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

What would you say is the most distinctive new phenomenon in this campaign, if we were to sort of put an epitaph, put a slogan at the bottom, put a caption at the bottom of the picture?

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I mean, putting aside the obvious one of the candidates [LAUGHS] and how big a story they are, I think the campaign has totally transformed the way that campaigns sort of get in touch and communicate with voters, be it through commercials, through free media, through the Internet.

It’s also changed the way they raise money from voters and, and organize voters. I just think that this is an entirely different campaign than we’ve seen before, in so small part because of the way Senator Obama sort of pushed the envelope on this, and it just changed the rules. I don’t think we’ll ever see a campaign like we saw in 2004 again.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Although maybe we will see all campaigns like 2008 from here on out, in the sense that – you make the great point, there’s a merging of messaging here. “Saturday Night Live” merges into political commercials, merges into free media, merges into the Internet. It’s all sort of circulating in, in almost the same screen.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I mean, I think what it is, is that nobody’s quite sure what works anymore, so therefore they do everything. So a perfect example would be Senator Obama the now [ ? ] Schneider buzz [?], but last week he does Jon Stewart, he does - he does the – his half- hour special on TV, and, you know, ending with a live shot in – I forget what state it was, but I was there [LAUGHS], and I think he did one of the network interviews. And he - you know, he does USA Today. You know, they have Net – they have Internet ads. I mean, they’re just throwing it out everywhere.

There is no sort of one powerful medium anymore. You know, in the old days, you might sit down the night before an election and give an interview to ABC or NBC or The New York Times and figure you’d reach most of the world.

That doesn’t work anymore. You’ve got to reach people through a lot more different ways. And I think this campaign really showed it. It really shook things up.

I think things are still evolving. I don’t – I think things will be different again in 2012. You know, if I could figure out how, I’d be a millionaire. But I just think that, you know, the world is really changing, and the campaign is at the crux of that.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, I guess, you know, the question now is what are the trends leading into the actual voting today that you’re seeing, particularly with the benefit of your sort of long view here?

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I mean, the trends are, you know, as they’ve been for a couple of weeks, Senator Obama has a substantial lead in, I think, every serious national poll that I’ve seen, and he’s got leads, though not as big, in all the sort of battleground state polls.

I think, you know, I’m one of those people who from the beginning have said, you know, it’s - it’s a mistake to write Senator McCain off, as I think some people have, and he’s got a daunting task, but it’s certainly not impossible. I mean, one of the things we don’t really know is there’s so many people starting out, we don’t know who’s voting, we don’t know how the electorate has really changed. We don’t know for sure that the Obama turnout operation is as powerful as, as we think it is.

I mean, the only way you really can test - as an outsider, the only way you can really test a turnout operation is on Election Day, so we are going to need to see how that is.

And, obviously, I think as we’ve talked on the show before, you know, to what extent there is any kind of hidden racial forces that might prevent some people from voting for him.

Now, I will say if these polls are correct, some of them, and he really has a 10 - or 11- point lead, you know, I mean, I don’t see how it will make that much of a difference. But that’s where we are.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

The, the racial question won’t make that much of a difference, yeah.

[OVERTALK]

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

Yeah.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Yeah, right.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I mean, assuming that those polls are right.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Right.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

But – but I mean, again, my feeling is, you know, voting is a very cool thing and, you know, everyone who tries to predict what’s going to happen and find out what’s going to happen, and I’m like just chill, wait ‘til nine o’clock. We’re going to know, you know. [LAUGHS]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, listen to Nagourney here. Voting is a very cool thing, just chill.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

[LAUGHING]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Whoah-oh! [LAUGHS]

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

I think that’s The Takeaway.[LAUGHS]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Are you sure - are you bucking to be a columnist over there at The Times?

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

Never, never, never. [LAUGHS]

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

Never. I think that Adam is right, and I think one of the things that’s interesting this year is, you know, how few people actually watch television ads, the great mainstay, because they have Tivos, they have DVRs –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Right.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

- and they just skip ‘em. And one of the things that we kept learning over and over and over again in the primary is that we, the, in the media and the punditocracy couldn’t very well predict because we are dealing with a whole new set of variables, and so everybody’s sort of looking at their models and they have their multicolor maps and they have all of this stuff, but in the end, we are still putting together these models based on past elections. And, as Adam has said, it’s completely different. The rules are totally different this year.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, let’s throw something in. What if there is a new set of rules and that is - you know, the Republicans have talked sort of bemoaningly about the lack of coattails for either the congressional candidates or the lack of incumbency, the fact that President Bush is so discredited among Republicans, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of coattail for John McCain to rely on.

Is it possible there’s an Obama coattail for McCain in the sense that people see this kind of blissed-out Obama supporter line at all of these polling stations and the Republicans in this late hour kind of go, you know what, we’re not taking this, we’re gonna head to the polls, and that there will be an increased turnout for Republicans that may be decisive?

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I, I think that it’s possible, but I think also one of the factors that is sort of working against Senator McCain here is that, in the end, base Republican voters weren’t that excited by him. And I think he – I think that he turned off, and our polling suggests, a lot of voters, including Republicans, by the way he ran his campaign and by his choice of Sarah Palin.

So while that - what you’re talking about is an important factor and I think could be in play, I think it’s mitigated by – someone said that we’re looking at a Republican standard bearer who just isn’t that popular in his own party. So I’m not sure.

The sort of reverse of that is, you know, one thing that it’ll be interesting to see is, you know, obviously Senator Obama has the potential to bring out a lot more voters. He also has a lot more – he has the potential to bring out a lot more African-American voters, stating the obvious, and that could really have an effect in some congressional races. And that’s why, you know, on a day like today, I really do keep an eye on Georgia. You know, on The New York Times electoral map we do on our website, we always kept it I think leaning red, but I always kept an eye on it just ‘cause, you know, a black turnout is really big in that state. You could see that really counter-intuitively going Democratic this year.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

John, I also think that clearly there are people that are going to be very troubled by the lines that they see, by the sort of sense of there are all these first-time likely Obama voters going out, and are going to go and vote because of it. But, you know, my sense from being out in the field is those people were already pretty motivated.

And then I think the sort of secondary kind of strike against McCain on this issue is he doesn’t have the get-out-the-vote infrastructure that Obama has. So you can have - I mean, and the Republicans have always beat the Democrats on get-out-the-vote infrastructure, so you can have a last-minute sentiment but without the infrastructure to fall back on, it makes it more shaky.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Here’s a question –

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

Yeah, but they always do a very good job – excuse me. The Republican National Committee has done a very good job under Karl Rove and Kent Malvin [?] in building an infrastructure and finding ways of ferreting out voters who have not voted before, so the only thing that McCain had [?] to build on, which is not insubstantial, was what was in place in 2002 and 2004, 2000.

And they built on it a bit, but one thing I think the Obama people really did, and this will be a legacy of this campaign whether they win or lose, is they studied the Bush campaign. Don’t forget how good the Bush campaign was in 2004 –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Sure.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

- and they learned from it. They did everything the Bush people did, and that’s very much the campaign model, including the turnout stuff.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Here’s a question for both of you, Andrea and Adam Nagourney. It seems to me that, you know, we’ll see what happens with Congressional hearings after this election, but money stopped being the boogey man in American politics in 2008, for some reason, and in fact, acquired a quality of well, if you can make, raise this much money, somebody must be supporting you. Adam?

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

I mean I think the reason why that is because it isn’t the issue it’s been in the past and you’re right, it could become one later on, you never know, is that a large number of the contributors that Senator Obama has are small dollar contributors.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

As far as we know, as far as we know.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

As far as we know, yeah, going back to your very important earlier point. Well, your stuff will come out at some point.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Right.

ADAM NAGOURNEY:

But as a political matter, for now, he’s been able to get around that sort of accusation, even than he’s raised more money than, you know, probably your budget for a year or two years. He’s been able to get around the accusation that he’s –

[ANDREA AND JOHN LAUGHING]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Yeah. Yeah, we use a billion dollars every two years, Adam. Thanks so much, that’s great.

[SEVERAL AT ONCE]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

I’ll definitely put in for a raise.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

Into the next [LAUGHS]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Adam [LAUGHS] Nagourney at The New York Times summing up this campaign. But we want to hear from you in this campaign.

[BEEP]

[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

JILL:

Hi. My name is Jill Korsin [?]. I’m calling from Bushwick in Brooklyn. I think that we are beginning a new time in the life of our country, and I’m just so excited. I’m ready to celebrate. Thank you. Bye-bye.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Voters all over America at 877-8MY-TAKE. You think there are lines in Bushwick, Andrea?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN:

I’m sure there are lines in Bushwick.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

She’s sure there are lines in Bushwick. Lines in Bushwick, sounds like an album title.