Vic Socotra

05 June 2008

The Last Crowd

Woman Watches Clinton Staff Depart the Virginia National Headquarters
04 June 2008- photo Vic Socotra

The Wings won the cup last night- but I did not know it until this morning. We lost power at three-thirty when the first of the big thunder-bumpers came roaring through. The sudden ferocity pummeled the sides of the building on Glebe where I work, and water drew horizontal lines on the window of the glass.

As a mater of principle, I determined that I would rather wait out the storm at home, and made preparations to leave. There was no point in getting started on a project only to lose it in a power surge, and I took the elevator down to the street.

I could have gone to the sub-basement and walked underground to the spot where the Hubrismobile rested under the hotel, but I wanted to see if the Secret Service was still waiting outside the back door of Hillary’s campaign headquarters.

The fiercest band of the storm had moved on, and through the diminishing raindrops I could see the two men in the dark suits in the black sedan still waiting.

The vigil had been going on through the afternoon. I had been part of the last crowd of the 2008 primary campaign for a while, hoping to see the Senator emerge from the building. Before the storm blew in I devoted three Marlboros worth of time waiting with the film crew staked out at the back door.

Periodically groups of young people would emerge from the building, mostly young women in casual dress, although there were some young men among them. They all could have stepped out of the pages of the J Crew catalog, or Urban Outfitters.

It appeared that the Senator was giving a personal farewell to all the volunteers. I waited as long as I could, and went back to the office. The film crew was gone, departed for higher ground, but the Special Agents were still there, stoic, in the front seat of the car.

I thought that the only thing worse than being on Hillary’s security detail would be losing Game Seven of the Cup, after skating hard all season.

When I drove up high enough in the garage for radio reception, I heard that the Candidate was going to make an announcement on Saturday, but it was clear to me that the decision had been made, and from here out the campaign could be conducted completely by telephone. There followed a feature on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the anniversary of which was precisely four decades before, and at least one before any of the kids working on the Clinton campaign were born.

A member of the last crowd at the Ambassador Hotel in LA told the story of the last minutes of the candidate’s life, and Sirhan Bishara Sirhan being dragged across a steam table in the kitchen as he lay mortally wounded.

The stoplights were out at George Mason, and the chaos at the intersections made it an interesting drive back to Big Pink. The power was out of course, and I checked my watch as I walked up the side stairs to the fourth floor.

I assumed that Dominion Power would be on the case and working aggressively to ensure that Hockey fans in the region would be taken care of at the first face-off, but when I plugged in my head-set to the little emergency radio, I heard they had bigger problems than Game Six.

There had been a tornado touch-down in Falls Church, and another funnel had run ran across I-95, fifty miles an hour and headed east.

The junior winds that had come with their swirling seniors had managed to rip the balcony door open, and slam it with enough force to break the safety chain and rip the lower hinge out of the splintered wood. It hung drunkenly on the frame, as the light faded, I decided to do the same.

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