The North Carolina polls closed at 7:30 p.m. The first cheer at Jillian's went up at 7:31.
OBAMA WINS IN NORTH CAROLINA flashed on the big-screen TVs and the Obama volunteers in the front room could not quite believe it. Not this soon. There were maybe 50 of them and they got to the South End sports bar early, bought dinner, found a booth for a long election night. Before they got their salads it was over.
The first numbers went up. Obama was ahead of Hillary Clinton 66 percent to 32. Cheers again.
The people in the room had worked for this moment. Alecia Bracy and her mom, Alverna, made phone calls and stuffed envelopes. Burton Pinckney knocked on more than 450 doors. Jimmy Hawk drove voters to the polls -- "for once the SUV came in handy," he said.
They kept looking at the TVs. Every screen said the same thing. It was real.
"We were all hoping that people would embrace his message," said Alecia Bracy, who's 49 and moved here from Detroit five years ago. "I wish in some ways that it was already over. But in other ways this has been good for him. It's made him tough."
Looking at the news it almost seemed impossible that Obama or Clinton would have a big win. They are locked in one of those movie fights where they hit each other with fists and bricks and steel pipes and yet somehow they're both standing.
Bill Clinton spent more time here than a Chapel Hill student on the seven-year plan. If your town had a stoplight and a place to plug in a microphone, Bill was there.
But it was not enough. Not close. Bill and Hillary worked the small rooms like an up-and-coming band. Obama was U2. He played the arenas.
This is the moment where some of you are welcome to pause and scoff. Lack of experience. Lack of substance. This will all crumple under the hard reality of politics. Objections noted.
Now listen.
"I'm 43 years old and I've never experienced anything like this," says Jimmy Hawk. "My mom worked on the Bobby Kennedy campaign. I've waited my whole life for someone who I can believe in like she believed in him."
"I've knocked on 450 doors over the last two weeks," says Pinckney, who's 38. "I thought his time to run might be four years or eight years from now. But the more he gets in front of people, the better he does."
The candidates hit all these towns, hold all these rallies, for a reason. People want to feel like they're part of something meaningful. They want to take a photo or shake a hand or take their children in hopes of saying one day: When you were a baby I took you to see the president.
At Jillian's a man named Rick Wade stood off to the side and smiled. He grew up in Lancaster and is now a senior adviser to the Obama campaign. He knows it is far from over. At press time Clinton was ahead in Indiana. Neither candidate has enough delegates to win.
But if you have spent much time in sports bars you know that moment when your team has won and, just for a night, the world lines up with what you believe in.
"We are all tired," Wade said. "But we are all fired up as well."
Wade is a professional. Now that North Carolina is in the books he'll move on. But the volunteers in the bar, the people who came together for this night -- they face two possibilities.
One is that this will be as good as it gets. The other is that they'll have another night in November.
The TV screens flash a new set of numbers and the crowd cheers again. It is way too early to go home.
