Las Vegas

In 2008, I watched the first of the presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain in a crowded theater in Portland, Oregon. The audience was loaded for bear when it came to McCain; they jeered and hooted at his every utterance—baristas and web designers mocking a war hero who had endured years of torture for his country. (They liked the people who weren’t captured, apparently.) Meanwhile, the crowd celebrated Obama throughout the debate, cheering and clapping when he spoke. The result: I walked out assuming Obama had won handily in a veritable landslide. The polls, however, were rather split on the matter.