barack obama wins! some thoughts on the elections
A few observations, mostly of the emotional gut variety. Questions about the challenges facing President-elect Barack Obama and the nation can wait a little while longer.
On election night I had to attend an election watching event with a mixed crowd - Republicans and Democrats and other. Not how I would have liked to watch the results but it was an invitation I couldn't turn down. So I spent the night chatting civilly with different people. When CNN called Ohio for Obama (after calling Pennsylvania with 0% of the vote counted...), I knew that was it - John McCain and Sarah Palin couldn't win without flipping a major Kerry '04 state, and there was no prospect of that. I only allowed myself a smile. When the polls closed on the West Coast and the networks called California and the election for Obama, everybody applauded - nicely. I clapped a few times and allowed myself a smile, hardly able to believe that Barack Obama had pulled it off and that Sarah Palin would not be measuring the White House for moose-fur drapes.
Shortly after, I was able to leave as the party broke up. I went to my car, and in the privacy of my car - finally alone - I really let my guard down and allowed myself to really FEEL the victory for Obama.
I didn't quite weep but it was close.
I allowed myself to hope that with the impending end of the de facto Bush Administration, and the beginning of an Obama Administration (I can finally type that), some of the things that have gone so terribly wrong (state-approved torture in the name of you and me and the rest of the American people, for one) over the past eight years can be reversed.
I'm not black, but yes one of the things that swept over me was the realization that we had elected a black President. That is an awesome thing. I read accounts of old black Americans, old enough to remember literacy tests designed to keep them from voting, realizing that we were on the verge of electing a black American to the highest office of the land. It has happened, and that is a wondrous thing.
Good luck, President-elect Obama.
On election night I had to attend an election watching event with a mixed crowd - Republicans and Democrats and other. Not how I would have liked to watch the results but it was an invitation I couldn't turn down. So I spent the night chatting civilly with different people. When CNN called Ohio for Obama (after calling Pennsylvania with 0% of the vote counted...), I knew that was it - John McCain and Sarah Palin couldn't win without flipping a major Kerry '04 state, and there was no prospect of that. I only allowed myself a smile. When the polls closed on the West Coast and the networks called California and the election for Obama, everybody applauded - nicely. I clapped a few times and allowed myself a smile, hardly able to believe that Barack Obama had pulled it off and that Sarah Palin would not be measuring the White House for moose-fur drapes.
Shortly after, I was able to leave as the party broke up. I went to my car, and in the privacy of my car - finally alone - I really let my guard down and allowed myself to really FEEL the victory for Obama.
I didn't quite weep but it was close.
I allowed myself to hope that with the impending end of the de facto Bush Administration, and the beginning of an Obama Administration (I can finally type that), some of the things that have gone so terribly wrong (state-approved torture in the name of you and me and the rest of the American people, for one) over the past eight years can be reversed.
I'm not black, but yes one of the things that swept over me was the realization that we had elected a black President. That is an awesome thing. I read accounts of old black Americans, old enough to remember literacy tests designed to keep them from voting, realizing that we were on the verge of electing a black American to the highest office of the land. It has happened, and that is a wondrous thing.
Good luck, President-elect Obama.
posted by Don Q Blogger at 3:24 AM
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