Things were going great. The registration drive was a success, the polls were showing a success, everywhere I looked--success! It was crazy, with all these people coming and interviewing me and talking to me and giving me advice. I became a national phenomenon, something we had used to talk about, dream about, but we certainly weren't sure it was gonna happen. But now things were better than we had ever hoped, because we had exposed poltics for what it was--a popularity contest. And I was making myself more popular.