So Obama and Clinton are duking it out in Ohio and Texas as I type, McCain is now Officially The Republican Candidate, and we are back home in London; alas, alack. The show will go on – keep watching this space for more My Fellow Americans activity – and for now it’s time for the My Fellow Americans awards, drawn from 24 states over seven frenetic weeks. So without further ado, let the magic commence with the most coveted award of all…

Best Steps
*The Rocky steps (Museum of Art, Philadelphia)

Honourable Mentions
*The Lincoln steps (Lincoln Monument, Washington DC)
*The Untouchables steps (Union Station, Chicago)

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Best Americana
*Tumbleweed (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon, randomly)

Honourable Mention
*The lockers and drinking fountains in Winnacunnet High School. It was like being in a American high-school movie. In fact, Tim Robbins was there, but he’s 7ft tall and greying so his speech wasn’t quite as Breakfast Club as we’d hoped (New Hampshire)

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The And-This-Is-The-Home-Of-Capitalism? Award For A Ridiculous Or Uninspiring Store Name
*Dress Barn. Would you buy your dresses from a barn? And this is a successful chain store!

Honourable Mentions
*Linen ‘n’ things. Um, vague much? Linen ‘n’ what?
*Jiffylube. Oh do come on.

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The Gwyneth Paltrow Transatlantic Understanding Award for Maintaining the Grand Traditions of British Culture
*Bob Bratchenthurst, a Greyhound bus driver from Kansas, for the following conversation:

Bob: “I could really use one of those, what is it you guys call it, a ‘pint’?”
Dan and Tom: “That’s right, a ‘pint’.”
[Bob smiles and wags his finger]
Bob: “Ah you see, I keep up with my literature. I’ve seen Shrek 3.”

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Best Quote Of This Or Any Election In The History Of Democracy
*Mike Huckabee, being challenged on his lagging in the delegate count:

“I know people say that the math doesn’t work out. Folks, I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those too.”

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The Going-Out-On-A-Limb Award For Taking A Controversial Position In A TV Debate
“I’m against illegal guns” – Hillary Clinton, Nevada Democratic Debate

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Best Bumper Sticker
*Vote or get run over! (Berkeley Campus, on the front of a badly-driven, speeding golf cart)

Honourable Mention
*Still voting Democrat? You’re stuck on stupid! (Louisiana)
*John Kerry ’04 (I can’t remember where I saw this but it made me laugh)

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The Onion Award For A Brilliantly Mundane Local News Headline:
*‘Senior Center Has Free Bus Service’ – The Deming Headlight (New Mexico)

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Best Road Sign
*We need to talk  -God (Oregon)

Honourable Mentions
*Normans Kill (upstate New York)
*Peace good war bad (California)
*World famous date shakes!
*South Fork Coyote Wash
*Prison facilities nearby, don’t pick up hitchhikers (all either Arizona or New Mexico)

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The Okay, I Concede Award For Proving That American Food Is Unequivocally Better Than British Food
*An unassuming highway-stop-off lunch, consisting of a melting, collapsing Reuben sandwich (pastrami, sauerkraut, melted cheese, amazing), served with a bowl of creamy, meaty, peppery clam chowder in a small, sunny town in California that will forever be known as Hill Valley, partly because of its similarity to Marty McFly’s home in Back To The Future, partly because we don’t remember the real name.

Honourable Mentions
*Perfectly cooked crepes in Houston, clam chowder in Pismo Beach, seafood gumbo in Mobile, Alabama, bagels and cream cheese everywhere, steak, eggs and hash browns for breakfast in Iowa City, an ice cream dessert in Boston that would have taken ten people to finish (really), the burgers pretty much everywhere, a pastrami on rye from Katz’s Deli in New York that melted like butter, superb, eye-poppingly substantial quantities of Tex-Mex food throughout the south-west, served with awesome Margeritas… man I’m hungry.

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The I-Can-Feel-My-Arteries-Trembling-Like-Leaves Award For Fatal Extravagance
*Monte Cristo Egg Rolls in Bennigans (Chicago). Here’s how the menu describes them:

“[a] delicious combination of turkey, ham, Swiss and American cheeses wrapped in a crispy shell and fried until golden. Dusted with powdered sugar and served with red raspberry preserves for dipping.”

So yeah, that’s sugary deep-fried ham and cheese with jam, basically. I ate four and felt quite unwell.

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The Aw-Bless-Him-For-Trying Award For Desperate Defence Of The Iraq War’s Legitimacy In The Face Of Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary
*Senator John Warner of Virginia, speaking at a John McCain event in Tallahassee, emphasised that the United States was not alone in its struggle in Iraq, as there were twelve countries currently fighting in the coalition. He didn’t say what they were, but it’s probably worth mentioning that the third most committed, in terms of personnel, after the US and UK, is Georgia. Looking at Wikipedia, the military giants El Salvador and Albania would make it into Sen. Warner’s Big Twelve as well.

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The If-Lawn-Signs-Were-Votes American Presidential Election Equivalency Award
*Obama narrowly sneaks it past Clinton and Edwards in the Democratic Lawn Sign Primary. Ron Paul routs everyone in the Republican field and then routs Obama in the general election, with lawn signs on every highway, back street, traffic bridge, and swamp-based tree (this happened!) in every state. If lawn signs were votes, Ron Paul would win 90% without breaking a sweat. Remember we’ve been through 24 different states since December 30, so we know what’s out there.

When we planned this trip, it always had definite bookends: the Iowa Caucus, at the start, and then Super Tuesday as the grand finale, the closest America has ever got to having a nationwide primary. With so many states voting on one day, it seemed like when the dust settled on 6 February we would have an end to our narrative, a final scene for our film: Tom and I stumbling tired, battered and bruised into the sunset, possibly accompanied by Governor Bill Richardson. Well, it now seems that someone’s shown that film to a test audience, and they’ve decided they want to spin out the plot for several more hours before resolving anything. Hillary, Barack: what are you guys trying to do to us?

As you may or may not know from the more traditional news outlets, John McCain was the big winner in the Republican race, with Mike Huckabee doing better than expected, and Mitt Romney doing worse than expected. The Republicans look closer than ever to picking McCain as their candidate, but doing so will alienate substantial swathes of their conservative base, especially in those southern states that Huckabee cleaned up in tonight. The night for the Democrats was pretty much split down the middle: Obama got more states, Hillary got more big states – including California – and neither of them will be conceding anything for a good while yet.

We’re just back from spending the marathon results session in La Val’s Pizza Restaurant, having been invited by the cheerful, resilient Berkeley for Obama supporters. We took our place at 4pm to watch the results start coming in from the eastern states, but at that time there wasn’t much politicking going on in the room. We met Sid, who is Canadian, and failing his economics degree at Berkeley because of his dedication to the Obama campaign. He went to Mason City, Iowa earlier this year, hitching a ride with another volunteer from Chicago out to the tiny midwestern town ahead of the caucus. “I’m pretty invested in this campaign,” he told us, with some understatement.

It wasn’t until 8pm local time, when the Californian polls closed, that the Obama supporters started to show up, with their signs, badges, and t-shirts, fumbling their way around plastic tables and into diner-style booths, their eyes permanently fixed on the big news-bearing screen in the middle of the room, like the Mona Lisa inverted.

In such an achingly long results session, lubricated by over seven hours of beer, soda, and tantalising, glistening pizza grease, there were inevitably considerable peaks and troughs. In the lulls, every new bit of news becomes magnified in importance, the absurdly over-used ‘Breaking News!’ tag for once convincing in its phoney weight. “Romney wins Montana!” Rachael called out at one point, seeming to realise about half-way through delivering these three words that none of them were of interest to her. We laugh at the relative insignificance of this news, electorally speaking. “Montana? What is that? Like maybe three delegates? A farmer, his wife, and their pet pig?” A debate ensues as to whether this line is better finished with the word ‘pig’, ‘cactus’, or ‘rock’, and whether Montana in fact has cacti – or anything else. It was a long night.

But there was genuine excitement too. When Obama overturned Hillary’s long-held lead in the slowly-tallying Missouri popular vote, it was met with a room-full of whoops, cheers, and a snatch of the classic ‘fired up! ready to go!’. Twenty seconds later, CNN projected Arizona for Hillary Clinton, to pantomime boos and hisses. When Alaska went for Obama, meanwhile, the 40-odd students erupted in tongue-in-cheek enthusiasm – massive, full-strength, double-armed high-fives are exchanged. ‘Woo! Alaska!” someone shouts. Meanwhile Senator Obama’s speech from Illinois, another fine one in a litany of fine speeches, earned him some dogged, sincere responses from the committed young activists in the room. “Change is coming to America” declaimed Obama from the TV screen. “Damn right it is!” shouted a fresh-faced young turk from beneath his nascent beard. “I didn’t travel the country for nothing!”

When CNN projected California for Clinton at about 9.20 local time, it was not met with surprise, let alone shock or horror; just quiet, mature murmurs of disappointment. There was no need for rage against the dying of the light (”Washington does not need more heat. It needs more light.” is one of my favourite Obama epigrams) – because the contest is not even half-lost yet. Victor, our friend from Wisconsin who we met earlier in the day, is concerned about what the prolonged struggle to find a nominee will do for the Democrats chances in November, but he’s also relishing the challenges ahead:

“When the delegate counts from tonight are all in they’ll be pretty even I think, Obama and Clinton, so it’s all about how the media report it in the next few days, whether they decide someone is ‘the big winner’. But I think it could be the first time in decades that the race goes all the way to a brokered convention [in Denver in late August] – which would be both awesome and absolutely terrifying at the same time.”

Six more months of this, followed by a kind of giant, three-day super-caucus to make the final decision? What kind of masochists do they take us for?

It’s D-Day eve, Mundane Monday, Calm Before The Storm Monday, and the most intense of the 22 migraine-intense battles going on when the polls open tomorrow morning is the contest for California’s massive haul of 370 pledged delegates – particularly in the absurdly tight Democratic race. Hillary Clinton had a substantial lead in the state for months, but thanks to a recent surge from Obama, the electoral junkie’s four favourite words still play tantalizingly on the tongue: too close to call.

Arriving in San Francisco in mid-afternoon, we visited the legendary McSweeneys store and writers’ workshop – 826 Valencia. Lee, the self-confessed political geek behind the desk, was wearing an Obama badge, and ready to do some “get out the vote stuff” the following day. We leave the store and a guy walking ahead of us is carrying an Obama banner. We drive through the Mission District in the rush hour and a solitary guy holding a huge homemade banner bearing the legend ‘Si se puede – Obama 08′ is waving it in the midst of a crowded intersection. Given this rash of ad hoc, last minute campaigning, it’s ironic that the two official Obama events we have lined-up for the evening are MIA. The first, a wine and cheese event in wealthy Commercial Avenue, is nowhere to be found. We approach the house it’s supposed to be at, and it’s only partially lit, with a distinct lack of Obama signs outside. The place is also disconcertingly quiet – and if there’s one thing we’ve learned on this trip it’s that groups of Obama supporters cannot be left alone for more than five seconds without chanting something. Nervously, we ring the doorbell, and a gruff-sounding guy answers on the intercom:

“Hello?”
“Er, yeah, is this the Obama wine and cheese event?”
“No. Wrong house.”
“Okay, sor-” click. We tip-toe back to our car.

Next, the supposedly boombox-soundtracked Obama ‘visibility event’ on 4th street was neither visible nor audible, and thus pretty much as abject a failure as you could get. Ho hum. A good opportunity to rest up at my cousin Sam’s house in Oakland ahead of the big day, and talk to him and his wife Yael about the election. Sam has been let down by electoral politics before – most notably when door-knocking for John Kerry in 2004, only to see Bush re-elected, to his dismay. But this time, he’s pretty excited.

“For once, my vote actually counts for something!” Normally the combination of being a registered Green and a resident of a state with a late primary date has rendered the situation otherwise (and please, let’s spare a thought for the voters of South Dakota and Montana, who don’t get to vote until 3 June this year). Both Sam and Yael will be voting for Obama, both of them like his willingness to say something – however nebulous – about tackling global warming. “But Obama’s not actually that progressive” Yael says. “I mean, what are the actual differences between Obama and Clinton, policy-wise?” she asks, semi-rhetorically. We mull on this: the differences are really more in tone and character. And perhaps more importantly, electability.

“Well that’s it. If they’re up against John McCain… those Christian conservative voters who don’t like McCain, and were maybe going to stay home on election day [in November], will come out just to vote against Hillary, they really see her as the antichrist.” Obama, meanwhile, consistently does well among Republicans and independents, thanks in part to his determination not to couch things in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. It’s surprising, given Obama’s centrism, that he has come out in favour of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, which is a huge issue in California, especially among Latino communities, but is also likely to incense the right. “I’m really pleased about that,” says Yael. “It shows he’s not pandering.”

The migraine is brewing, the troops are going over the top, and we’ll be right here, in the eye of the storm, in the heat of the battle, mixing metaphors like Tom Cruise mixing Manhattans in Cocktail.

Rolling into the pacific Pacific town of Pismo Beach (pop. 8,551) in early evening, we were beset by the usual travellers’ tiredness after the drive from Los Angeles – I was also recovering from Robert de Niro’s attempts to poison me, via some very dodgy veal and wild mushroom ravioli in his Hollywood restaurant Ago. With tired legs and eyes, finding someone in an out-of-season resort town who was more interested in Super Tuesday than this afternoon’s Superbowl seemed like a pretty tall order. Thank heaven then for Sean, our waiter in Brad’s, an informal diner with excellent clam chowder and a smattering of happy-looking Sunday evening customers. Sean is 25, making the best of his eye-wateringly bad uniform shirt, and, fortunately, he has more than a bit to say about the election.

Originally from Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sean is normally a Democrat, but this time he’s happy to tell us he’s going to be voting for Ron Paul, “even though he’s a long-shot”. He likes Paul’s ‘no tax on tips’ policy that would help him out so much as a waiter, but it’s the Texan’s broader economic programme that has really impressed Sean. But if – more likely, when – Paul doesn’t get the Republican nomination?

“I’ll vote for whichever Democrat is against McCain,” he says, not having to think about this face-off too hard. “Either would be better than McCain. He’s no better than Bush basically.”

Really? You don’t think McCain’s got a slightly softer, more grandfatherly quality than the current President?

“Nah. He’s the kind of guy who’d shoot the black boyfriend you bring home.” he says, addressing our female friend.

When Sean registered locally two weeks ago, he got ten of his friends to sign up to vote too, and told them to go and research the candidates and pick one. “I don’t think I’ve persuaded any of them to vote Ron Paul unfortunately, but never mind,” he says, still pleased with his efforts – as well he should be. Because, you want to know what real patriotism is? It’s not sporting a ‘Boycott France’ bumper sticker, as we saw at a John McCain rally in Tallahassee; it’s Sean’s simple, selfless actions right there. Not to get all sanctimonious or anything.

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With 48 hours until the results come in on what the SF Chronicle is calling Super Complicated Tuesday (has any day in history ever had this many pseudonyms?), the tension is rising, the media are going nuts, and the USA’s fiendishly complicated system of delegates and districts is an algebraic albatross around every journalist’s neck. Super Tuesday has more permutations than I’ve had hot dinners. In light of this, it’s a shame that the US is ranked among the worst of the world’s industrialised nations at math(s).

In other news, you think Barack Obama’s a great speaker? Michelle Obama wipes the floor with her husband. Check out her speech at UCLA today, it’s powerful stuff.

Ha, made you look. Because of course, we don’t know. No-one knows.

But unlike our good friends the professionals, we don’t make a big show of anointing winners based on a few polls. Ahem. Cough. Like EVERYONE else did. ‘What’s at the core of The Obama Phenomenon?’ begged CNN on the morning of the New Hampshire primary, vaunting his 10% poll lead. ‘Why did we get it so wrong?’ they asked each other later that night. ‘Well, we’re TV news pundits, we’re not supposed to be that smart’, one ‘expert’ joked. The experts just pulled off the same trick for last night’s Republican primary in Michigan: predicting a win for McCain over Romney, when in fact the latter won very comfortably.

This is why we’re not doing much predicting. Reporting on people and issues, capturing atmospheres and talking to voters is considerably more satisfying than pouring gas into or onto phoney bandwagons all day long. Also, it means you don’t have to follow up unexpected results by desperately walking back your erroneous predictions until you trip over your own feet.

There are a lot of bandwagons about in US election coverage. For my esteemed New Statesman colleague Andrew Stephen, the Obama bandwagon is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel. Stephen spent 2,000 words cynically outlining every single thing that Barack Obama has ever done wrong, and omitting everything he has ever done right, as some kind of weird backwards-facing explanation of why the Senator for Illinois didn’t in fact overhaul Hillary in New Hampshire, as the polls had predicted. (”What’s going wrong for the man who would be President?” begged the Statesman’s front cover. Erm, nothing actually. He failed to secure New Hampshire’s miniscule number of delegates by a small margin. Big whoop.)

Stephen’s hatchet-job gives us such relevant insights as this:

“Far from being the brilliant student his image suggests, Obama was a consistently B-grade pupil.”

Phew. Thank god the voters know the truth now. Only ‘B’s: shocking. And never mind Obama’s Harvard degree, of course, which goes unmentioned.

Dennis Kucinich’s English wife Elizabeth was quick to lament the “celebrification” (her neologism) of American politics when I buttonholed her at her husband’s ‘un-victory’ party in Manchester, New Hampshire last week. “This whole thing is crazy,” she said, gesturing at the cameras, mics, lights, and lenses ringed around the edges of Jillian’s bar, “it’s more like following around a rock star than a politician.” She’s right, but I would tweak her critique – the US media are not so much guilty of reducing politics to celebrity culture; they’re guilty of reducing it to sport.

It’s not just the constant, ongoing ‘post-game analysis’, with talking heads, graphs, and super-magnified controversies that are reverently granted capital letters (’Waterworksgate’, the New York Daily News dubbed Hillary’s damp retinas after Iowa). It’s the fanatical obsession with comparative statistics that renders politics as sport.

After the Democratic debate in New Hampshire, ABC News looked at the key words that had been used. Two in particular were tallied against one another: ‘Change’ got 25. ‘Qualifications’ got 15. John Edwards and Barack Obama were both campaigning for ‘change’; Hillary on the other hand wanted her experience and her political CV to be the decisive factor. The final result was 25-15 in favour of ‘change’. Ergo, you can infer, Hillary lost the debate.

Obama’s campaign accentuates this reductive, post-modern approach to the campaign by placing the word ‘Hope’ in big white letters on his posters, where you would ordinarily expect them to say ‘Obama’. This is a pretty out-there idea, when you think about it. You are being encouraged to vote for an abstract concept rather than an individual. What happens in 2012, should Barack Obama win (his B-grades at school notwithstanding)? ‘Re-elect Hope! Four more years of Hope!’

The morning after New Hampshire, FOX News announced that they had discovered the ‘x’ factor that had won it for Hillary – single women, according to their exit polls (more numbers, oh blessed numbers!). This information gave them all they needed to complete what they somehow neglected to call The Mummy Continuum:

“This massive turn-out of single women raises an interesting possibility,” the breakfast news team told us brightly, “the Soccer Mums clinched it for Bill Clinton, the Security Mums got George W. Bush elected – could it be that the Single Mums win it for Hillary Clinton?”. Pausing briefly to observe that, erm, actually, a single woman is not the same thing as a single mum, this was pretty much the last straw for us. We turned off the TV.

Reducing politics to a number or a pie-chart is no better than reducing it to a haircut or a salty tear – crocodilian or otherwise. Either way, it’s no wonder American voters get fed up with mainstream election coverage before the race has even got out of the starting blocks. Our advice would be follow our lead, turn off the TV, and get out there.