TORONTO // On Thursday night, a small part of Canada became a slice of the United States for the Democrats Abroad as party members living in Toronto celebrated Barack Obama's nomination. In the crowded cellar of Empire, a posh restaurant in Toronto's wealthy Hazelton Lanes, about 200 US citizens working and living in Canada's biggest city gathered to watch Mr Obama make history - the first African-American to win a major party nomination as candidate for president.
A massive widescreen TV and the Empire's thudding sound system relayed the event, shaped as a rock 'n' roll show, complete with a classic Greek stage set and such acts as Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow. But the music was just the appetiser. Politics plays as blood sport on US television and the Democratic Party convention this year ran out like the Super Bowl. And the faces of the Empire's Democratic onlookers bore all the anxiety of fans long denied the championship trophy - the White House.
The crowd comprised dancing African-American ladies, bearded New Englanders and frizzy-haired female academics from the West Coast. Toronto TV news crews patrolled the tables and with typical American ebullience the audience members beamed into the lens. One beefy man in a white "Ohio for Obama" T-shirt that barely spanned his chest, told the camera: "It's not about politics any more. It's about a new America, getting us back as a country honoured, not hated, around the world."
The crowd echoed the sentiments of the Ohio man throughout the three-hour event, enthusing about the prospect of an America proud to be a global leader, not a global bully. Rob Tait, 47, an advertising creative director, said: "What's amazing about this convention is the way the speeches have built, one on the other." Mr Tait was still in awe of Hillary Clinton's fire-breathing speech on behalf of Mr Obama two nights earlier and her husband Bill's understated masterpiece an evening later: "People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power," the former president had said.
The house erupted in laughter when Al Gore, former US vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said: "The fossil fuel industry has had a 50-year lease on the [Republican Party] and they're drilling it for all its worth." As Mr Gore spoke, the TV "fact crawl" ran a comment the Democrats have repeated again and again - Mr Obama could not even gain entrance to the 2000 nominating convention that launched Mr Gore's doomed run for the White House.
Though few probably noticed - the room had gone still as Mr Gore spoke about Mr Obama's humility and a past eerily close to Abraham Lincoln, the former US president. That comparison resonated with two men chatting at one of the Empire's tables. "You don't get it here [in Toronto]," one of the men, wearing an Obama baseball cap, shouted over the music, "but America's sick of the corruption in Washington. The country's been bought and sold twice over under Bush. It's sickening."
His friend, wearing an Obama T-shirt, simply said: "[Obama's] not from Washington - he's going to Washington". When Mr Obama finally came to the microphone, the simmering atmosphere in the Empire's basement boiled over. Mr Obama's speechmaking skills are remarkable for someone so untried politically, and the crowd went wild as he rolled out his campaign slogans. But, as one woman said before the speech began: "It's not about 'Yes we can' - [Mr Obama's catchphrase in both speech and video] - but, hell, because we have to."
The Empire audience seemed to recognise they have a candidate who is politically gifted; that was compounded when Pat Buchanan, a conservative columnist, TV commentator and former speech writer for Richard Nixon, stunned his fellow commentators on cable news channel MSNBC when he termed Mr Obama's performance "the best convention speech ever". Mr Obama's speech did hit all the marks; the live blogging following his words on the progressive Democratic website Daily Kos - the most popular blog in the United States - registered 17,000 comments pouring in per minute after Mr Obama went off the air.
If the émigré Democrats at the Empire felt anything that drizzly August night, 45 years to the day Martin Luther King, the martyred civil rights leader, spoke to a huge throng on the Mall in Washington, it was this: Mr Obama has opened the possibility for an American centre-left too long denied. bhowley@thenational.ae
