Dispatches · Across America · 2008
Race in ’08
For six months before the 2008 election I travelled America for The Washington Post, reporting on how race intersects with politics — text and video dispatches, the domestic mirror of How the World Sees America.
How West Virginia Democrats Came to Terms with Obama’s Rise
Waneta Acker, 88, had run the one-room Democratic headquarters downtown for two decades. Then fifty Obama devotees showed up at the monthly meeting — and the party she knew had to decide what it was willing to become.
Read the dispatch · Watch the film →Will Race Deter the Hillary Hispanics?
In Charlie’s Spic-and-Span diner, the old guard politicked upstairs while Obama volunteers plotted in the baby-blue basement. New Mexico had gone for Gore by 366 votes, then Bush by 6,000 — and the north would decide it again.
Read the dispatch · Watch the film →Originally published by The Washington Post, 2008. Republished from the author’s archive.