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.

*****

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.

The election for President is usually between two candidates: one Democrat, and one Republican. Except when it isn’t. But let’s just say it is.

That lucky Democrat and that lucky Republican are officially chosen by representatives of each state at the two national conventions in the summer (and these final two then slug it out until election day on 6 November). The conventions are empty prime-time charades of party unity, the actual political debate at which “wouldn’t fill a bumper sticker”, as PJ O’Rourke observed. “Party platforms are as bland as club-soda soup, vague as TV commercials for condoms.” he sighed wearily in Parliament Of Whores.

The real decision-making, hounding, smearing, policy-making and arguing happens during the primary season, when the state representatives for each party are chosen. That’s where it gets interesting – if by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘needlessly complicated’.

This post on The Guardian election blog is a neat summary of the sprawling democratic triffid that is the American primary process. In short, each state holds a primary or a caucus, where voters choose their respective Democrat and Republican nominees. Some states send more representatives to the party convention than others, depending on their size. So California sends 55, while Wyoming sends 3.

The process is spread out over six months, but the vast majority of states will hold their primaries before, or on, 5 February, known as Super Tuesday – and those first frenetic six weeks of 2008 will probably determine which two candidates are vying for President all the way to November.

The primary season commences on 3 January with the Iowa caucus, where – this being a caucus, not a traditional ‘tick the box’ primary – voters gather in small groups in private houses (and schools, churches and community centres) to debate the pro’s and con’s of each candidate, before indicating their preferred candidate by standing in the relevant corner of the living room.

Welcome to America, where Victorian parlour games are used to select the most powerful person in the world.