DATELINE: New Orleans, Louisiana
It’s one of those probably phoney bits of received wisdom that American Idol gets more votes than the Presidential election – insert your own cynical sneer about celebrity culture here if you so wish. But it is true that the American election process is fiendishly complicated – we’ve got so many hits [...]

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DATELINE: Mobile, Alabama

“When voters want a national Daddy, someone to be tough and strong and defend the country, they vote Republican. When they want a Mommy to give them jobs, healthcare… they vote Democrat.” – The West Wing, Series 7 Episode 2, ‘The Mommy Problem’
John McCain is counting pretty damn hard on the American people [...]

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DATELINE: Tallahassee, Florida
In our unstinting quest to unearth at least one Republican during this trip, we made south from beautiful, ghostly Savannah, Georgia, hoping to see John McCain speak on Monday afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida (Florida’s hugely important primary is on 29 January). The dour, flyover-scarred city is the largest in the United States, and [...]

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DATELINE: Greenville, South Carolina

INT. Early evening on the day of the South Carolina Republican Primary. A virtually empty bar on Greenville’s wealthy Main Street.
Tom, an indie-looking guy with a Rider of Rohan hood and an English accent, gestures to a TV in the corner of the bar.
Tom: “Excuse me. Are you going to be screening [...]

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DATELINE: Chicago, Illinois
Allan Stevo is a dedicated man. A Chicagoan originally, he has returned from five years in Slovakia, specifically to campaign for a ’second tier’ candidate called Ron Paul. If you’ve spent much time on YouTube lately (on the political videos, rather than ‘two girls one cup’ clips), you might have seen the comments [...]

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