Web of Life

The joy of this election has been watching rich and powerful candidates on their knees begging for votes, sweating it out in state after state. In America, all politics is local.

At the end of what every network presenter self-pityingly describes as a gruelling campaign, both Kerry and Bush were looking rather well.

Republican rumours about Kerry’s failing health and unexplained absences during the campaign had retreated. Thanks to the closeness of the swing state vote we have been able to account for every trip that Kerry has made to the bathroom.

George W Bush, meanwhile, looks as if he has just returned from summer camp, eager for some new practical jokes. His trademark smirk has become a repressed holler.

Bush’s joie de vivre insulates him for either outcome. At the end of the last campaign Bush was asked what he would do if he lost, he replied: ``that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. I guess I’d just go back to Dallas, watch a lot of baseball games, spend time with my friends and Laura and the girls, make a living, enjoy my life. Do what other people do.’’

But his self-described optimism this time round is that of a boy hugging a secret. A week before last election day he suddenly announced on his campaign aircraft ``I’ve won’’. Either instinct or faith has been the trademark of the Bush presidency, and this election is its greatest political test so far.

Elsewhere however, activists have been relying on persuasion rather than divine intervention.

Outside City Hall in Philadelphia, Democrat supporters campaigned to the end. Cars honked for Kerry and honked again for the more comely activists. Many of the demonstrators had rushed in from outside Philadelphia. The Pennsylvanian city is the birthplace of America, and has a decisive say in its future. Every vote counts (and is counted) is a fact rather than a political slogan.

Mark Bluzer, an accountant, was confident enough of New York’s Democratic vote to do some last-minute maths in Philadelphia.

``In New York you are preaching to the choir,’’ he said. A Puerto Rican student standing close by had attended the last Kerry rally in the city. He described the candidate as ``dazzling’’, an unprecedented adjective for Kerry.

Only Jane Fonda shares the belief in Kerry’s Lincoln-like powers of rhetoric. A chubby pink-faced history graduate called Pat McInerney waved his placard at me like a surfboard. ``You English? What do you think of Tony Blair?’’ he asked with a dimpled smile. ``I mean Bush is like Hitler right? And you English stood up to Hitler. So why is Blair wiping Bush’s arse? Hey, are you going to say arse in the paper?’’

A self-possessed, dark-haired girl interrupted him: ``But the English are against the war in Iraq aren’t they? I’m so sorry about the Black Watch. They lost someone didn’t they?’’

Further down Market Street a couple of Bush supporters held their own among the carnival of Kerry placards. Bill Hash, aged 20, said it was not as lonely being a Bush supporter as it looked. ``There are plenty of people here who support Bush. They are just afraid to speak up. It just doesn’t sound hip to say you are a conservative.’’

Detached from the crowd, further down the street was a middle-aged man with a ``Defeat Bush’’ poster. He said he had taken three hours a day off work for as long as he could remember in order to stand there. His name was Perry La Bruno. But people had shouted vulgar alternatives at him. ``Some folks smile, some scream at me. You’ve got to do what you believe.’’ It is hard to imagine anyone in Philadelphia screaming. Its Quaker manners are evident everywhere.

A beaming black man on crutches who cries ``four more years’’ is greeted with an enthusiastic response from a man on the bench ``four more wars’’.

People open doors for me, whether or not I was going in. When I looked in at the National Archives Office, I was whisked off to meet the regional administrator, by virtue of my English accent. I thought the point of Philadelphia was that they saw off English accents. The pretty Episcopal Christ Church where you can see George Washington’s pew has an engraving of an instruction given in 1776: ``It will be proper to omit those petitions wherein the King of Great Britain is prayed for.’’

I followed a couple of nuns into the Benjamin Franklin Museum and stood alongside them as they read and re-read Franklin’s words on ``improvement in moral philosophy’’. ``The discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another’s throats.’’ Too late for this election.

Back at my small colonial hotel, away from the excitingly brightened bars, dinner is served at the Quaker hour of 5.30. A waitress asks kindly if I have finished ``working on my salad’’, applying the Dutch country work ethic to food as to the rest of life. A retired couple at the next table phone their daughter to tell her they would not be home till 9pm ``so don’t wait up for us’’. Election night promised to be full of drama in Philadelphia, so long as the resident stayed awake for it.

Philadelphia may be soundly Democrat, but its rural suburbs are wobbly.

City Line Avenue polling station is housed at the back of a retirement home, one of a group of concrete buildings and car parks hidden in the red and gold of a Pennsylvanian national park. How rural does that sound? The queue was short to the plain table, on which was placed a bible and an American flag.

In fact there were more volunteers guarding the integrity of the election process than voters. I asked if they felt intimidated by Michael Moore’s pledge to swoop down on suspect polling stations.

Moore - who’s weirdly foldable face popped up on television to josh about Bin Laden’s ``bootleg’’ copy of his film - believes this election has the ethical standard of a rogue African state.

But at City Line Avenue, voters would have found it difficult to register as Mary Poppins because they knew the officials. ``They are mostly senior voters here, from the retirement home.’’ explained the young man behind the desk. ``Hey, I’m not a senior voter’’ came a voice from behind the curtain of the polling booth.

A slight, grey-haired woman in slacks piped up from the corner of the room: ``Not many of us left in the retirement home either. Numbers down from 150 to 9. Oh and Molly.’’

The woman, whose name was Harriet Sork said that she had seen more people voting this time round before 10am than the whole of last election day.

``We would all like this just to be over’’, she said, patting the air with her sparrow hand. ``It is too much already with all the TV and the ads.’’ I asked who she wanted to see as president on Wednesday.

``In America, you never discuss politics or religion,’’ she chided me innocently.

(C) The Telegraph Group London 2004