'By the People' Watch Party: On '09 Election Night, Dems Liked '08 Ending Better

At a Tuesday night watch party for HBO's "By the People," the Amy Rice and Alicia Sams documentary about the Obama presidential campaign, my BlackBerry starting receiving breaking news alerts about the GOP victory in New Jersey's governor race at about the time the movie peaked with Barack Obama winning the White House a year ago today.

Ironic? Of course.

The party spread over four floors of a trendy club, The Park, in downtown Washington and was jammed with Democrats -- many young veterans of the Obama campaign, some now serving in the administration.

The party was sponsored by a few high-profile firms that worked for the campaign -- to name a few, senior adviser David Axelrod's former firm, AKPD, and GMMB (where one of the partners, Jim Margolis, found his camera crews competing with the omnipresent Rice for shots of Obama during the campaign).

Unlike a screening in Chicago last Friday at the Cadillac Theater, where the audience clapped, applauded and laughed but did not go over the top, the crowd in D.C. included insiders and unrestrained partisans. They chanted the battle cry, "Fired up, ready to go" and cheered like it was yesterday when the movie got to the part where Obama wins the crucial Iowa caucus.

The opening scene showed fundraiser Jordan Kaplan -- an insider's insider -- and I heard a ripple of "It's Jordan" as folks realized who was in the background with Obama.

That opening scene is election night 2006, with Obama in a war room with Robert Gibbs, now the White House press secretary, taking in returns and fending off interview questions on whether he will run for president. Obama calls Nancy Pelosi and congratulates her on the Democrats winning control of the House, setting the stage for her to become speaker.

At the time, Obama says he loves elections -- especially when he is not on the ballot. Perhaps he will amend that now. Democrats lost governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, where Obama campaigned for the incumbent, Jon Corzine. Obama is not used to having candidates he stumps for lose. The Dems at the watch party told me they liked the movie ending better than the one a year later, though it's not clear what the long-term impact on Obama and his agenda will be.

Actor Ed Norton, whose production company parented the film, was at the party and spoke briefly at the end. The Rice and Sams documentary, he said, was "a permanent window on how this piece of history was received."

Among those present were Margolis and campaign staffers now in the administration who are featured in the movie: speech writer Jon Favreau, deputy press secretary Tommy Vietor, Michael Blake of the office of intergovernmental affairs and Ronnie Cho at the FCC.

Also seen: from the Obama press office, Nick Shapiro, Ben LaBolt, Reid Cherlin, Kevin Lewis and Priya Singh; the N.Y. Times' Jeff Zeleny (who's in the film . . . and, by the way, I am in a few scenes also); actor Tate Donovan; CNN's Ed Henry; Paul Tewes, who ran the Iowa operation; lobbyist Steve Elmendorf; and Julianna Smoot, who ran the finance operation and is now the chief of staff for the office of the U.S. trade representative.