By FRANK RICH
ON the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy.
Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.
For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.
So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.
The most conspicuous clichés to fall, of course, were the twin suppositions that a decisive number of white Americans wouldn’t vote for a black presidential candidate — and that they were lying to pollsters about their rampant racism. But the polls were accurate. There was no “Bradley effect.” A higher percentage of white men voted for Obama than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton included.
Obama also won all four of those hunting-and-Hillary-loving Rust Belt states that became 2008’s obsession among slumming upper-middle-class white journalists: Pennsylvania and Michigan by double digits, as well as Ohio and even Indiana, which has gone Democratic only once (1964) since 1936. The solid Republican South, led by Virginia and North Carolina, started to turn blue as well. While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat.
And what about all those terrified Jews who reportedly abandoned their progressive heritage to buy into the smears libeling Obama as an Israel-hating terrorist? Obama drew a larger percentage of Jews nationally (78) than Kerry had (74) and — mazel tov, Sarah Silverman! — won Florida.
Let’s defend Hispanic-Americans, too, while we’re at it. In one of the more notorious observations of the campaign year, a Clinton pollster, Sergio Bendixen, told The New Yorker in January that “the Hispanic voter — and I want to say this very carefully — has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Let us say very carefully that a black presidential candidate won Latinos — the fastest-growing demographic in the electorate — 67 percent to 31 (up from Kerry’s 53-to-44 edge and Gore’s 62-to-35).
Young voters also triumphed over the condescension of the experts. “Are they going to show up?” Cokie Roberts of ABC News asked in February. “Probably not. They never have before. By the time November comes, they’ll be tired.” In fact they turned up in larger numbers than in 2004, and their disproportionate Democratic margin made a serious difference, as did their hard work on the ground. They’re not the ones who need Geritol.
The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”
The rave reviews for Palin were completely disingenuous. Anyone paying attention (with the possible exception of John McCain) could see she was woefully ill-equipped to serve half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. The conservatives Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy said so on MSNBC when they didn’t know their mikes were on. But, hey, she was a dazzling TV presence, the thinking went, so surely doltish Americans would rally around her anyway. “She killed!” cheered Noonan about the vice-presidential debate, revising her opinion upward and marveling at Palin’s gift for talking “over the heads of the media straight to the people.” Many talking heads thought she tied or beat Joe Biden.
The people, however, were reaching a less charitable conclusion and were well ahead of the Beltway curve in fleeing Palin. Only after polls confirmed that she was costing McCain votes did conventional wisdom in Washington finally change, demoting her from Republican savior to scapegoat overnight.
But Palin’s appeal wasn’t overestimated only because of her kitschy “American Idol” star quality. Her fierce embrace of the old Karl Rove wedge politics, the divisive pitting of the “real America” against the secular “other” America, was also regarded as a sure-fire winner. The second most persistent assumption by both pundits and the McCain campaign this year — after the likely triumph of racism — was that the culture war battlegrounds from 2000 and 2004 would remain intact.
This is true in exactly one instance: gay civil rights. Though Rove’s promised “permanent Republican majority” lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.
That lagging indicator aside, nearly every other result on Tuesday suggests that while the right wants to keep fighting the old boomer culture wars, no one else does. Three state initiatives restricting abortion failed. Bill Ayers proved a lame villain, scaring no one. Americans do not want to revisit Vietnam (including in Iraq). For all the attention paid by the news media and McCain-Palin to rancorous remembrances of things past, I sometimes wondered whether most Americans thought the Weather Underground was a reunion band and the Hanoi Hilton a chain hotel. Socialism, the evil empire and even Ronald Reagan may be half-forgotten blurs too.
If there were any doubts the 1960s are over, they were put to rest Tuesday night when our new first family won the hearts of the world as it emerged on that vast blue stage to join the celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. The bloody skirmishes that took place on that same spot during the Democratic convention 40 years ago — young vs. old, students vs. cops, white vs. black — seemed as remote as the moon. This is another America — hardly a perfect or prejudice-free America, but a union that can change and does, aspiring to perfection even if it can never achieve it.
Still, change may come slowly to the undying myths bequeathed to us by the Bush decade. “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” Obama is fond of saying. Neither does groupthink. We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.
The post-Bush-Rove Republican Party is in the minority because it has driven away women, the young, suburbanites, black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, educated Americans, gay Americans and, increasingly, working-class Americans. Who’s left? The only states where the G.O.P. increased its percentage of the presidential vote relative to the Democrats were West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.
The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.
So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
My initial thoughts on the Obama victory and the last 18 months...
By me...
The following thought may come-off as a cliché; however, my understanding is that cliché’s are phrases that are “always” said in particular situations… While a similar phrase may have been said or used in some way in the past, I doubt there has been a moment where such words so accurately described such a moment.
On November 4, 2008, the dreamers and idealists showed the cynics and the ideologues, the greedy and the bigoted that in this country – our country – anything truly is possible!... Ok, I got my sound byte out of the way early…
As Obama, himself, said on many occasions, he is an imperfect candidate and despite the media assessment, those of us who so ardently support him always knew this. We’re not expecting a perfect president but a president who wears his imperfections on his sleeve and works WITH us toward a better future that we all seek.
But perhaps the greatest statement made Tuesday night wasn’t about Obama at all… it was about America. As I’ve seen and uptick in anti-gay, anti-immigrant and anti-poor rhetoric and policies over the last eight years, I began to wonder if the American I grew-up hearing about was actually the America I lived in. Tuesday night, there was no longer any doubt. While California did ban gay marriage (we still have a long fight ahead), and inequality and bigotry still exist, as a country we can overcome these instead, as was the case in the 1960s south, be defined by them.
I don’t expect Barack Obama to fully live-up to the expectations that await him; for no human could ever do so of expectations so high. But I do expect the underlying principles of empathy, compassion and collective good will to re-enter public discourse and voices such as Limbaugh’s, Hannity’s, Moore’s, etc… - who have thrived in the current partisan climate – to be slowly marginalized as the country rises above them.
I understand that there are still plenty (perhaps, a majority) who think the above it all hot air. They say the reason Obama won was simply because economic issues trumped other concerns. They forget one thing… Lehman Brothers failed in September. Barack Obama declared his candidacy in February 2007. Barack’s movement pre-dated the economic downfall, enough, so that the Freshman Senator took down Hillary Clinton and the entrenched political establishment in the Democratic Party.
When I “endorsed” Obama in an e-mail the day he declared, I did so having no idea that he would win – or even that he could win (regardless of how much I’d love to claim credit for predicting the future). What I heard and saw in him was much bigger than single policies or a political party… optimism, hope, empathy… all the buzz words that Obama’s critics cast aside as naiveté. In the end, current crises and political discourse will define particular policies but it’s what lies at their foundation that has so caught-on in America and what appealed to me the second Obama stepped-off the stage at the 2004 DNC.
The final question we all have is, what truly changed Tuesday night? Well, we will truly learn that answer over the next 4 – 8 years. But those who woke-up Wednesday morning and perceived themselves living in the same country where they went to bed Tuesday night aren’t paying attention… and that’s ok… WE’VE got 4 years to CATCH their attentions…
The following thought may come-off as a cliché; however, my understanding is that cliché’s are phrases that are “always” said in particular situations… While a similar phrase may have been said or used in some way in the past, I doubt there has been a moment where such words so accurately described such a moment.
On November 4, 2008, the dreamers and idealists showed the cynics and the ideologues, the greedy and the bigoted that in this country – our country – anything truly is possible!... Ok, I got my sound byte out of the way early…
As Obama, himself, said on many occasions, he is an imperfect candidate and despite the media assessment, those of us who so ardently support him always knew this. We’re not expecting a perfect president but a president who wears his imperfections on his sleeve and works WITH us toward a better future that we all seek.
But perhaps the greatest statement made Tuesday night wasn’t about Obama at all… it was about America. As I’ve seen and uptick in anti-gay, anti-immigrant and anti-poor rhetoric and policies over the last eight years, I began to wonder if the American I grew-up hearing about was actually the America I lived in. Tuesday night, there was no longer any doubt. While California did ban gay marriage (we still have a long fight ahead), and inequality and bigotry still exist, as a country we can overcome these instead, as was the case in the 1960s south, be defined by them.
I don’t expect Barack Obama to fully live-up to the expectations that await him; for no human could ever do so of expectations so high. But I do expect the underlying principles of empathy, compassion and collective good will to re-enter public discourse and voices such as Limbaugh’s, Hannity’s, Moore’s, etc… - who have thrived in the current partisan climate – to be slowly marginalized as the country rises above them.
I understand that there are still plenty (perhaps, a majority) who think the above it all hot air. They say the reason Obama won was simply because economic issues trumped other concerns. They forget one thing… Lehman Brothers failed in September. Barack Obama declared his candidacy in February 2007. Barack’s movement pre-dated the economic downfall, enough, so that the Freshman Senator took down Hillary Clinton and the entrenched political establishment in the Democratic Party.
When I “endorsed” Obama in an e-mail the day he declared, I did so having no idea that he would win – or even that he could win (regardless of how much I’d love to claim credit for predicting the future). What I heard and saw in him was much bigger than single policies or a political party… optimism, hope, empathy… all the buzz words that Obama’s critics cast aside as naiveté. In the end, current crises and political discourse will define particular policies but it’s what lies at their foundation that has so caught-on in America and what appealed to me the second Obama stepped-off the stage at the 2004 DNC.
The final question we all have is, what truly changed Tuesday night? Well, we will truly learn that answer over the next 4 – 8 years. But those who woke-up Wednesday morning and perceived themselves living in the same country where they went to bed Tuesday night aren’t paying attention… and that’s ok… WE’VE got 4 years to CATCH their attentions…
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Commentary: My father, George Wallace, and Barack Obama
Editor's note: Peggy Wallace Kennedy is the daughter of George C. Wallace and Lurleen Wallace, who both were governors of Alabama. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama, with her husband, Mark Kennedy, a retired state Supreme Court justice. They have two sons, Leigh, a decorated veteran of the Iraq war, and Burns, a college sophomore.
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MONTGOMERY, Alabama (CNN) -- I heard a car door slam behind me and turned to see an elderly but spry woman heading my way.
The night before, a gang of vandals had swept through the cemetery desecrating graves, crushing headstones and stealing funereal objects.
My parent's graves, situated on a wind-swept hill overlooking the cemetery, had not been spared. A large marble urn that stood between two granite columns had been pried loose and spirited away, leaving faded silk flowers strewn on the ground.
I was holding a bouquet of them in my arms when the woman walked up and gave me a crushing hug. "Honey," she said, "you don't know me, but when I saw you standing up here on this hill, I knew that you must be one of the girls and I couldn't help myself but to drive up here and let you know how much me and my whole family loved both of your parents. They were real special people."
I thanked her for her kind words as we stood side by side gazing down at the graves of Govs. George Wallace and Lurleen Wallace.
After a few moments, the woman leaned into me and spoke almost in a conspiratorial whisper. "I never thought I would live to see the day when a black would be running for president. I know your Daddy must be rolling over in his grave."
Not having the heart or the energy to respond, I gave her bony arm a slight squeeze, turned and walked away. As I put the remnants of the graveyard spray in the trunk of my car, I assumed that she had not bothered to notice the Barack Obama sticker on my bumper.
When I was a young voter and had little interest in politics, my father would mark my ballot for me. As I thought about the woman in the cemetery, I mused that if he were alive and I had made the same request for this election, there would be a substantial chance, though not a certainty, that he would put an "X" by Obama's name.
Perhaps it would be the last chapter in his search for inner peace that became so important to him after becoming a victim of hatred and violence himself when he was shot and gravely injured in a Laurel, Maryland, shopping center parking lot. Perhaps it would be a way of reconciling in his own mind that what he once stood for did not prevent freedom of opportunity and self-advancement from coming full circle; his final absolution.
George Wallace and other Southern governors of his ilk stood defiantly in the 1950s and '60s in support of racial segregation, a culture of repression, violence and denial of basic human rights.
Their actions and the stark images of their consequences that spread across the world galvanized the nation and gave rise to a cry for an end to the American apartheid. The firestorms that were lit in Birmingham, Oxford, Memphis, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Little Rock and Selma were a call to arms to which the people responded.
And now a new call to arms has sounded as Americans face another assault on freedom. For if the stand in the schoolhouse door was a defining moment for George Wallace, then surely the aftermath of Katrina and the invasion of Iraq will be the same for George W. Bush.
The trampling of individual freedoms and his blatant contempt for the rights of the average American may not have been as obvious as an ax-handle-wielding governor, but Bush's insidiousness and piety have made him much more dangerous.
Healing must come, hope will be our lodestar, humility will reshape the American conscience, and honesty in both word and deed will refresh and invigorate America, and having Barack Obama to lead will give us back our power to heal.
My father lived long enough to come to an understanding of the injustices borne by his deeds and the legacy of suffering that it left behind. History will teach future generations that he was a man who used his political power to promote a philosophy of exclusion.
As his daughter, who witnessed his suffering in the twilight of his years and who witnessed his deeds and heard his words, I am one who believes that the man who, on March 7, 1965, listened to the reports of brutality as they streamed into the Governor's Mansion from Selma, Alabama, was not the same man who, in March of 1995, was welcomed with open arms as he was rolled through a sea of African-American men, women and children who gathered with him to welcome another generation of marchers, retracing in honor and remembrance the historic steps from Selma to Montgomery.
Four years ago, the young Illinois senator who spoke at the National Democratic Convention mesmerized me. I hoped even then that he would one day be my president.
Today, Barack Obama is hope for a better tomorrow for all Americans. He stands on the shoulders of all those people who have incessantly prayed for a day when "justice will run down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).
Perhaps one day, my two sons and I will have the opportunity to meet Barack Obama in person to express our gratitude to him for bringing our family full circle.
And today, the day after the election, I am going to ride to the cemetery so that if asked, I can vouch for the fact that the world is still spinning but my father lies at peace.
.
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (CNN) -- I heard a car door slam behind me and turned to see an elderly but spry woman heading my way.
The night before, a gang of vandals had swept through the cemetery desecrating graves, crushing headstones and stealing funereal objects.
My parent's graves, situated on a wind-swept hill overlooking the cemetery, had not been spared. A large marble urn that stood between two granite columns had been pried loose and spirited away, leaving faded silk flowers strewn on the ground.
I was holding a bouquet of them in my arms when the woman walked up and gave me a crushing hug. "Honey," she said, "you don't know me, but when I saw you standing up here on this hill, I knew that you must be one of the girls and I couldn't help myself but to drive up here and let you know how much me and my whole family loved both of your parents. They were real special people."
I thanked her for her kind words as we stood side by side gazing down at the graves of Govs. George Wallace and Lurleen Wallace.
After a few moments, the woman leaned into me and spoke almost in a conspiratorial whisper. "I never thought I would live to see the day when a black would be running for president. I know your Daddy must be rolling over in his grave."
Not having the heart or the energy to respond, I gave her bony arm a slight squeeze, turned and walked away. As I put the remnants of the graveyard spray in the trunk of my car, I assumed that she had not bothered to notice the Barack Obama sticker on my bumper.
When I was a young voter and had little interest in politics, my father would mark my ballot for me. As I thought about the woman in the cemetery, I mused that if he were alive and I had made the same request for this election, there would be a substantial chance, though not a certainty, that he would put an "X" by Obama's name.
Perhaps it would be the last chapter in his search for inner peace that became so important to him after becoming a victim of hatred and violence himself when he was shot and gravely injured in a Laurel, Maryland, shopping center parking lot. Perhaps it would be a way of reconciling in his own mind that what he once stood for did not prevent freedom of opportunity and self-advancement from coming full circle; his final absolution.
George Wallace and other Southern governors of his ilk stood defiantly in the 1950s and '60s in support of racial segregation, a culture of repression, violence and denial of basic human rights.
Their actions and the stark images of their consequences that spread across the world galvanized the nation and gave rise to a cry for an end to the American apartheid. The firestorms that were lit in Birmingham, Oxford, Memphis, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Little Rock and Selma were a call to arms to which the people responded.
And now a new call to arms has sounded as Americans face another assault on freedom. For if the stand in the schoolhouse door was a defining moment for George Wallace, then surely the aftermath of Katrina and the invasion of Iraq will be the same for George W. Bush.
The trampling of individual freedoms and his blatant contempt for the rights of the average American may not have been as obvious as an ax-handle-wielding governor, but Bush's insidiousness and piety have made him much more dangerous.
Healing must come, hope will be our lodestar, humility will reshape the American conscience, and honesty in both word and deed will refresh and invigorate America, and having Barack Obama to lead will give us back our power to heal.
My father lived long enough to come to an understanding of the injustices borne by his deeds and the legacy of suffering that it left behind. History will teach future generations that he was a man who used his political power to promote a philosophy of exclusion.
As his daughter, who witnessed his suffering in the twilight of his years and who witnessed his deeds and heard his words, I am one who believes that the man who, on March 7, 1965, listened to the reports of brutality as they streamed into the Governor's Mansion from Selma, Alabama, was not the same man who, in March of 1995, was welcomed with open arms as he was rolled through a sea of African-American men, women and children who gathered with him to welcome another generation of marchers, retracing in honor and remembrance the historic steps from Selma to Montgomery.
Four years ago, the young Illinois senator who spoke at the National Democratic Convention mesmerized me. I hoped even then that he would one day be my president.
Today, Barack Obama is hope for a better tomorrow for all Americans. He stands on the shoulders of all those people who have incessantly prayed for a day when "justice will run down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).
Perhaps one day, my two sons and I will have the opportunity to meet Barack Obama in person to express our gratitude to him for bringing our family full circle.
And today, the day after the election, I am going to ride to the cemetery so that if asked, I can vouch for the fact that the world is still spinning but my father lies at peace.
O-H...
Did you know that 72% of all new ohio votes went Obama? And even Hamilton County (Cincinnati, which is the most conservative part of the state) went Obama?!?!?!
Living History
Occasionally America turns out to be every bit as good as its hype. It's thrilling to be around to witness one of those moments.
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 17, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History threw a spectacular party on New Year's Eve 1999, but perhaps the millennium really arrived there just a few weeks ago. A group of New York City schoolchildren were at an event marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist and president, and at the end of the visit one of the kids raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "Was he black?"
History will record that on Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation.
America is as much a concept as it is a country, but it is a concept too often honored in the breach. The Statue of Liberty welcomes with the words "Give me your tired, your poor." Yet generation after generation of immigrants arrived here to face contempt and hatred until the passage of time, the flattening of accents, turned them into tolerated natives. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet for years the politicians and the powerful seemed to take the gender of that noun literally and denied all manner of rights to women.
But no injustice or prejudice brought to bear by this country against its own people can compare with how it has treated black men and women. Humiliation, degradation, lynchings, beatings, murders. The rights the United States pretended to confer upon all were unthinkingly and consistently denied them: the right to the franchise, to representation, to protection by the justice system.
Literal ownership gave way to something not so different: "When we are moved to better our lot," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, "we do not ask ourselves 'can we do it?' but 'will they let us do it?' " Henry Louis Gates Jr., in the memoir "Colored People," says simply, "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores." Alice Walker left home for college on a bus and was ordered to move after a white woman complained that she was too near the front.
None of this was so very long ago.
Time passed. Things changed. John Lewis, a boy who loved books but was not permitted to enter the public library, a man whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers when he led a peaceful march across a bridge, now sits in Congress. Gates is a professor at Harvard, Walker a revered writer. Segregation as a matter of law has given way to segregation as a matter of class and custom. As President-elect Obama said when he gave a speech about race earlier this year, speaking of systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families, "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual. "In the end, then," he said, "what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one.
There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.
Now a black man will be called Mr. President.
They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.
But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 17, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History threw a spectacular party on New Year's Eve 1999, but perhaps the millennium really arrived there just a few weeks ago. A group of New York City schoolchildren were at an event marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist and president, and at the end of the visit one of the kids raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "Was he black?"
History will record that on Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation.
America is as much a concept as it is a country, but it is a concept too often honored in the breach. The Statue of Liberty welcomes with the words "Give me your tired, your poor." Yet generation after generation of immigrants arrived here to face contempt and hatred until the passage of time, the flattening of accents, turned them into tolerated natives. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet for years the politicians and the powerful seemed to take the gender of that noun literally and denied all manner of rights to women.
But no injustice or prejudice brought to bear by this country against its own people can compare with how it has treated black men and women. Humiliation, degradation, lynchings, beatings, murders. The rights the United States pretended to confer upon all were unthinkingly and consistently denied them: the right to the franchise, to representation, to protection by the justice system.
Literal ownership gave way to something not so different: "When we are moved to better our lot," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, "we do not ask ourselves 'can we do it?' but 'will they let us do it?' " Henry Louis Gates Jr., in the memoir "Colored People," says simply, "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores." Alice Walker left home for college on a bus and was ordered to move after a white woman complained that she was too near the front.
None of this was so very long ago.
Time passed. Things changed. John Lewis, a boy who loved books but was not permitted to enter the public library, a man whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers when he led a peaceful march across a bridge, now sits in Congress. Gates is a professor at Harvard, Walker a revered writer. Segregation as a matter of law has given way to segregation as a matter of class and custom. As President-elect Obama said when he gave a speech about race earlier this year, speaking of systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families, "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual. "In the end, then," he said, "what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one.
There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.
Now a black man will be called Mr. President.
They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.
But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.
The Next President
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 5, 2008
Editorial
This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:
An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.
Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.
His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.
Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.
With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.
Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.
The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.
His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.
Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.
There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.
Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.
That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.
November 5, 2008
Editorial
This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:
An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.
Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.
His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.
Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.
With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.
Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.
The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.
His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.
Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.
There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.
Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.
That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.
Now that I'm sober...
There are so many emotions going through me, this city, this country and the world right now... I don't know where to start. I'm very busy at work so I will post articles, photos, etc... over the next few days and eventually I will get to my own thoughts once I have some time. I stopped to pick-up every newspaper I could find on my way to work this morning and the hardest part is choosing which one to frame! An impromptu celebration broke-out outside the White House last night. I've never seen anything like this. Some people are saying it's like News Years Eve but the only thing that comes to mind for me are those photos of the parade after World War II was over and people are literally dancing in the street nation-wide... This is incredible!!!!
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
What this means...
We can all tell our future kids, grandkids or just random strangers, that on November 4, 2008 at roughly 11 pm, we stood-up as one people and said that in this country - our country - anything truly is possible! What a great time to be an American!
Prediction
There's a ton of predictions out there, most of which are just hot air. I posted Karl Rove's yesterday because seeing Rove predict a Democratic victory over his delusional "Conservative majority for a generation" was worth it.
Nate Silver, from www.fivethirtyeight.com, is one of the best pollsters in my opinion. He uses complex mathematical models that I won't even try to explain. Long story short, his projection: Obama 349 Electoral Votes, McCain 189 Electoral Votes.
Nate Silver, from www.fivethirtyeight.com, is one of the best pollsters in my opinion. He uses complex mathematical models that I won't even try to explain. Long story short, his projection: Obama 349 Electoral Votes, McCain 189 Electoral Votes.
Our model projects that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana. These states total 353 electoral votes. Our official projection, which looks at these outcomes probabilistically -- for instance, assigns North Carolina's 15 electoral votes to Obama 59 percent of the time -- comes up with an incrementally more conservative projection of 348.6 electoral votes.
Obama campaign instills new pride
By Eugene Robinson
Whoever wins this election, I understand what Barack Obama meant when he said his faith in the American people had been "vindicated" by his campaign's success. I understand what Michelle Obama meant, months ago, when she said she was "proud of my country" for the first time in her adult life. Why should they be immune to the astonishment and vertigo that so many other African-Americans are experiencing? Why shouldn't they have to pinch themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming, the way that I do?
I know there's a possibility that the polls are wrong. I know there's a possibility that white Americans, when push comes to shove, won't be able to bring themselves to elect a black man as president of the United States. But the spread in the polls is so great that the Bradley effect wouldn't be enough to make Obama lose; it would take a kind of "Dr. Strangelove effect" in which voters' hands developed a will of their own.
I'm being facetious but not unserious. In my gut, I know there's a chance that the first African-American to make a serious run for the presidency will lose. But that is precisely what's new and, in a sense, unsettling: I'm talking about possibility, not inevitability.
For African-Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It's disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.
Advertisement
You see, I remember a time of separate and unequal schools, restrooms and water fountains -- a time when black people were officially second-class citizens. I remember moments when African-Americans were hopeful and excited about the political process, and I remember other moments when most of us were depressed and disillusioned. But I can't think of a single moment, before this year, when I thought it was within the realm of remote possibility that a black man could be nominated for president by one of the major parties -- let alone that he would go into Election Day with a better-than-even chance of winning.
Let me clarify: It's not that I would have calculated the odds of an African-American being elected president and concluded that this was unlikely, it's that I wouldn't even have thought about such a thing.
African-Americans' love of country is deep, intense and abiding, but necessarily complicated. At its hour of its birth, the nation was already stained by the Original Sin of slavery. Only in that past several decades has legal racism been outlawed and casual racism made unacceptable, at least in polite company. Millions of black Americans have managed to pull themselves up into mainstream, middle-class affluence, but millions of others remain mired in poverty and dysfunction.
A few black Americans broke through into the highest echelons of American society. Oprah Winfrey became the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry by appealing to an audience that is mostly white. Richard Parsons, Stanley O'Neal and others became alpha males in the lily-white world of Wall Street. Through superhuman skill and unbending will, Tiger Woods came to dominate a sport long seen as emblematic of white privilege.
Along came Barack Obama, a young man with an unassailable resume and a message of post-racial transformation. Initially, a big majority of African-Americans lined up behind his major opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. The reason was simple: In the final analysis, white Americans weren't going to vote for the black guy. Better to go with the safe alternative.
But an amazing thing happened. In the Iowa caucuses, white Americans voted for the black guy. That's the moment Obama was referring to when he said his faith in the American people was vindicated. For me, it was the moment when the utterly impossible became merely unlikely. That's a huge, fundamental change, and it launched a sequence of events over the subsequent months that made me realize that some things I "knew" about America were apparently wrong.
Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won't change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.
We can all have a new kind of pride in our country.
Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post.
Whoever wins this election, I understand what Barack Obama meant when he said his faith in the American people had been "vindicated" by his campaign's success. I understand what Michelle Obama meant, months ago, when she said she was "proud of my country" for the first time in her adult life. Why should they be immune to the astonishment and vertigo that so many other African-Americans are experiencing? Why shouldn't they have to pinch themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming, the way that I do?
I know there's a possibility that the polls are wrong. I know there's a possibility that white Americans, when push comes to shove, won't be able to bring themselves to elect a black man as president of the United States. But the spread in the polls is so great that the Bradley effect wouldn't be enough to make Obama lose; it would take a kind of "Dr. Strangelove effect" in which voters' hands developed a will of their own.
I'm being facetious but not unserious. In my gut, I know there's a chance that the first African-American to make a serious run for the presidency will lose. But that is precisely what's new and, in a sense, unsettling: I'm talking about possibility, not inevitability.
For African-Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It's disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.
Advertisement
You see, I remember a time of separate and unequal schools, restrooms and water fountains -- a time when black people were officially second-class citizens. I remember moments when African-Americans were hopeful and excited about the political process, and I remember other moments when most of us were depressed and disillusioned. But I can't think of a single moment, before this year, when I thought it was within the realm of remote possibility that a black man could be nominated for president by one of the major parties -- let alone that he would go into Election Day with a better-than-even chance of winning.
Let me clarify: It's not that I would have calculated the odds of an African-American being elected president and concluded that this was unlikely, it's that I wouldn't even have thought about such a thing.
African-Americans' love of country is deep, intense and abiding, but necessarily complicated. At its hour of its birth, the nation was already stained by the Original Sin of slavery. Only in that past several decades has legal racism been outlawed and casual racism made unacceptable, at least in polite company. Millions of black Americans have managed to pull themselves up into mainstream, middle-class affluence, but millions of others remain mired in poverty and dysfunction.
A few black Americans broke through into the highest echelons of American society. Oprah Winfrey became the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry by appealing to an audience that is mostly white. Richard Parsons, Stanley O'Neal and others became alpha males in the lily-white world of Wall Street. Through superhuman skill and unbending will, Tiger Woods came to dominate a sport long seen as emblematic of white privilege.
Along came Barack Obama, a young man with an unassailable resume and a message of post-racial transformation. Initially, a big majority of African-Americans lined up behind his major opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. The reason was simple: In the final analysis, white Americans weren't going to vote for the black guy. Better to go with the safe alternative.
But an amazing thing happened. In the Iowa caucuses, white Americans voted for the black guy. That's the moment Obama was referring to when he said his faith in the American people was vindicated. For me, it was the moment when the utterly impossible became merely unlikely. That's a huge, fundamental change, and it launched a sequence of events over the subsequent months that made me realize that some things I "knew" about America were apparently wrong.
Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won't change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.
We can all have a new kind of pride in our country.
Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post.
Why American Youth Will Vote
Though we are sometimes too cool for our own good, the youth of America are also naïve enough to hope. That's a good thing.
Courtney E. Martin | November 4, 2008
Let's just clear the air. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about electoral politics. Especially if you, like me, have only voted in two presidential elections that were both highly contested, dragged out affairs involving hanging chads, smug Bushes, and a cowardly Congress.
And even if you didn't have the opportunity to vote in those deflating, hang-over inducing debacles, you watched it happen. You were a greasy-faced adolescent, part of a generation raised on "save the world" rhetoric and compulsory community service. You stole your mom's "I Voted" sticker and stuck it on your messenger bag. You dreamed of going behind those secret curtains and pulling the lever yourself. And then you learned about the electoral college and voter fraud and it all seemed like a whole lot of hype.
But this, all you hipsters and hip-hop heads, Rock Band addicts and radical libertarians, 18- and 28-year-olds, is why we will vote today.
We will vote because we were raised on a lot of rhetoric about the American Dream, but rarely have a chance to participate in it so directly. Hang out in this sprawling, strip-malled land of opportunity long enough, and you learn that "bootstraps" is code for "you're on your own," and the legacy of slavery and sexism is invisible only to those who benefit from it.
It's hard to counter the deeply entrenched notion that all hard work is equally rewarded in the good ol' U.S. of A. But on this day, November 4, Election Day, every single person that walks in that booth -- first-generation American, Thomas Jefferson's great-great-great grandson, black, white, Latino, Asian, Ivy League-educated, junior-high drop out, gay, straight, disabled, skinny, fat, male, female alike -- is granted equal say in our shared destiny.
Your daddy doesn't have to own the booth. You don't have to have a special voting prep course. You don't need to use big words or dress in business casual. You only need show up and pull that lever.
We will vote because we know that while the president cannot save us from ourselves, he or she can be a powerful symbol of the best within us. American citizens make America what it is each and every day. The choices we make about what to consume, how to treat one another, where and with whom we spend our precious time and energy -- this is what adds up to the sum of our country. But the president represents our best intentions. He or she stands before the world as a figurehead. His or her voice is the singular chorus of our collective notion of the country's future.
We will vote because our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have brought us to this country -- sometimes under fire, flood, the threat of famine, and almost always with great personal sacrifice -- because they had a dream about who we would someday be. We want to be that somebody on Election Day. We want to show them that, while their idea of America may have been a little too romantic, their love was never wasted on us.
We will vote because it is time to show -- with fierce and united force -- just what our generation is made of. We've heard the stories, watched the grainy footage, of the so-called heyday of youth activism. But the '60s are over. And we may not be as convinced of the power of protest, we may have shorter hair and attention spans, but we are deeply, profoundly committed to being responsible citizens. We will vote because it's an opportunity to provide skeptical pundits who have written us off as apathetic with statistics that will shut them up, once and for all.
We will vote because those of us who are female know that women were beaten, ostracized, divorced, and threatened for our privilege. It's hard to even imagine that there was a time when our politics were considered irrelevant simply because of our sex, hard to imagine sitting at dinner with our fathers and brothers, told to keep quiet about matters of national importance. We will vote in honor of our own blissful amnesia of these preposterous times.
We will vote because those of us who are youth of color know that our ancestors not only endured economic oppression, physical and verbal abuse, and humiliation, but died for our privilege. And for the first time in American history, many of us have the opportunity to elect a leader who looks like us, doesn't demonize or condescend to us, who has shared some of our most intimate experiences of growing up in a country with an unfinished racial revolution.
We will vote because we want to be a part of history. We want to sit down with our children and grandchildren as they hit the history books and tell them colorful stories about the election of ‘08 with all its unprecedented twists and turns, invoke the feeling in the air as we strolled to our polling place, and pat them on the head, saying, "Someday, sweetie, you too will get to vote in a groundbreaking election."
We will vote because we have found the real world is sometimes an alienating place, and this is a way to feel less alone.
We will vote because we dreamed that we would someday "make a difference" in the world, and then our rent was hard to afford and our cigar-smoking uncles kept asking us what we were going to do with our lives and we got drunk and forgot. Voting will remind us of ourselves that summer when we were eight and sent all of our lemonade stand profits to Sally Struthers even if we weren't sure it would really help the swollen-bellied children in Africa. It was something to do. It was somebody to be.
We will vote because, though we are sometimes too cool for our own good, we're also young and naïve enough to hope. And as Barack Obama himself has told us, "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
Hope, kids. Hope hard. And write the true story of an America that stars you as the vote-casting, wide-eyed protagonist. I can almost promise there's a happy ending.
Courtney E. Martin | November 4, 2008
Let's just clear the air. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about electoral politics. Especially if you, like me, have only voted in two presidential elections that were both highly contested, dragged out affairs involving hanging chads, smug Bushes, and a cowardly Congress.
And even if you didn't have the opportunity to vote in those deflating, hang-over inducing debacles, you watched it happen. You were a greasy-faced adolescent, part of a generation raised on "save the world" rhetoric and compulsory community service. You stole your mom's "I Voted" sticker and stuck it on your messenger bag. You dreamed of going behind those secret curtains and pulling the lever yourself. And then you learned about the electoral college and voter fraud and it all seemed like a whole lot of hype.
But this, all you hipsters and hip-hop heads, Rock Band addicts and radical libertarians, 18- and 28-year-olds, is why we will vote today.
We will vote because we were raised on a lot of rhetoric about the American Dream, but rarely have a chance to participate in it so directly. Hang out in this sprawling, strip-malled land of opportunity long enough, and you learn that "bootstraps" is code for "you're on your own," and the legacy of slavery and sexism is invisible only to those who benefit from it.
It's hard to counter the deeply entrenched notion that all hard work is equally rewarded in the good ol' U.S. of A. But on this day, November 4, Election Day, every single person that walks in that booth -- first-generation American, Thomas Jefferson's great-great-great grandson, black, white, Latino, Asian, Ivy League-educated, junior-high drop out, gay, straight, disabled, skinny, fat, male, female alike -- is granted equal say in our shared destiny.
Your daddy doesn't have to own the booth. You don't have to have a special voting prep course. You don't need to use big words or dress in business casual. You only need show up and pull that lever.
We will vote because we know that while the president cannot save us from ourselves, he or she can be a powerful symbol of the best within us. American citizens make America what it is each and every day. The choices we make about what to consume, how to treat one another, where and with whom we spend our precious time and energy -- this is what adds up to the sum of our country. But the president represents our best intentions. He or she stands before the world as a figurehead. His or her voice is the singular chorus of our collective notion of the country's future.
We will vote because our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have brought us to this country -- sometimes under fire, flood, the threat of famine, and almost always with great personal sacrifice -- because they had a dream about who we would someday be. We want to be that somebody on Election Day. We want to show them that, while their idea of America may have been a little too romantic, their love was never wasted on us.
We will vote because it is time to show -- with fierce and united force -- just what our generation is made of. We've heard the stories, watched the grainy footage, of the so-called heyday of youth activism. But the '60s are over. And we may not be as convinced of the power of protest, we may have shorter hair and attention spans, but we are deeply, profoundly committed to being responsible citizens. We will vote because it's an opportunity to provide skeptical pundits who have written us off as apathetic with statistics that will shut them up, once and for all.
We will vote because those of us who are female know that women were beaten, ostracized, divorced, and threatened for our privilege. It's hard to even imagine that there was a time when our politics were considered irrelevant simply because of our sex, hard to imagine sitting at dinner with our fathers and brothers, told to keep quiet about matters of national importance. We will vote in honor of our own blissful amnesia of these preposterous times.
We will vote because those of us who are youth of color know that our ancestors not only endured economic oppression, physical and verbal abuse, and humiliation, but died for our privilege. And for the first time in American history, many of us have the opportunity to elect a leader who looks like us, doesn't demonize or condescend to us, who has shared some of our most intimate experiences of growing up in a country with an unfinished racial revolution.
We will vote because we want to be a part of history. We want to sit down with our children and grandchildren as they hit the history books and tell them colorful stories about the election of ‘08 with all its unprecedented twists and turns, invoke the feeling in the air as we strolled to our polling place, and pat them on the head, saying, "Someday, sweetie, you too will get to vote in a groundbreaking election."
We will vote because we have found the real world is sometimes an alienating place, and this is a way to feel less alone.
We will vote because we dreamed that we would someday "make a difference" in the world, and then our rent was hard to afford and our cigar-smoking uncles kept asking us what we were going to do with our lives and we got drunk and forgot. Voting will remind us of ourselves that summer when we were eight and sent all of our lemonade stand profits to Sally Struthers even if we weren't sure it would really help the swollen-bellied children in Africa. It was something to do. It was somebody to be.
We will vote because, though we are sometimes too cool for our own good, we're also young and naïve enough to hope. And as Barack Obama himself has told us, "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
Hope, kids. Hope hard. And write the true story of an America that stars you as the vote-casting, wide-eyed protagonist. I can almost promise there's a happy ending.
2008 Senate Election Scorecard
Council for a Livable World
Mark the Contests as They Are Settled
51: Democratic seats as of Nov. 4
7-7:30 PM (EST)
___Virginia: +1 - Mark Warner (D) vs. Jim Gilmore (R) – slam dunk for the Democrats
___Georgia: ? - Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) vs. Jim Martin (D) – Chambliss narrowly favored; if Martin upsets the incumbent or forces a runoff in a month (the winner must receive 50% + 1), it will be a good night for Democrats
___Kentucky: ? - Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) vs. Bruce Lunsford (D) – Minority Leader favored; if Lunsford pulls off an upset, 60 votes are in sight
8-8:30 PM (EST)
___North Carolina: +1 - Kay Hagan (D) vs. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) – Although there are conflicting polls, Hagan has maintain a narrow lead in most polls
___New Hampshire: +1 –Jeanne Shaheen (D) vs. Sen. John Sununu (R) – Shaheen has been ahead the entire campaign and should win, in a reversal of the same matchup six years ago
___Maine: no change - Sen. Susan Collins (R) vs. Rep. Tom Allen (D) – only a miracle – a huge Obama landslide -- can save Allen against the ever-popular Collins
___Mississippi -? - Sen. Roger Wicker (R) vs. Ronnie Musgrove (D) – this is another contest where the Republican is favored and a Musgrove upset moves D’s towards the magic 60
9-9:30 PM (EST)
___New Mexico: +1 - Rep. Tom Udall (D) vs. Rep. Steve Pearce (R) – an easy win for one of the Udall cousins
___Colorado: +1 Rep. Mark Udall (D) vs. ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) – more of a struggle than for his cousin, but still a win
___Minnesota: ? - Al Franken (D) vs. Sen. Norm Coleman (R) vs Dean Barkley (I) – there are conflicting polls here and an independent with substantial support, making this contest difficult to predict
___Louisiana - no change - Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) vs. John Kennedy (R) – the only hope for a Republican takeover of a Democratic seat, but not much of one
10-10:30 PM (EST)
No key contests
11-11:30 PM (EST)
Oregon: +1 - Jeff Merkley (D) vs. Sen. Gordon Smith (R) – upstart Merkley has staked out a narrow but consistent lead and should win
Mid-night – 1:00 AM
___Alaska: +1 - Nick Begich (R) vs. Sen. Ted Stevens (R) – A Mayor beats a man with conviction(s).
___GRAND TOTAL
Mark the Contests as They Are Settled
51: Democratic seats as of Nov. 4
7-7:30 PM (EST)
___Virginia: +1 - Mark Warner (D) vs. Jim Gilmore (R) – slam dunk for the Democrats
___Georgia: ? - Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) vs. Jim Martin (D) – Chambliss narrowly favored; if Martin upsets the incumbent or forces a runoff in a month (the winner must receive 50% + 1), it will be a good night for Democrats
___Kentucky: ? - Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) vs. Bruce Lunsford (D) – Minority Leader favored; if Lunsford pulls off an upset, 60 votes are in sight
8-8:30 PM (EST)
___North Carolina: +1 - Kay Hagan (D) vs. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) – Although there are conflicting polls, Hagan has maintain a narrow lead in most polls
___New Hampshire: +1 –Jeanne Shaheen (D) vs. Sen. John Sununu (R) – Shaheen has been ahead the entire campaign and should win, in a reversal of the same matchup six years ago
___Maine: no change - Sen. Susan Collins (R) vs. Rep. Tom Allen (D) – only a miracle – a huge Obama landslide -- can save Allen against the ever-popular Collins
___Mississippi -? - Sen. Roger Wicker (R) vs. Ronnie Musgrove (D) – this is another contest where the Republican is favored and a Musgrove upset moves D’s towards the magic 60
9-9:30 PM (EST)
___New Mexico: +1 - Rep. Tom Udall (D) vs. Rep. Steve Pearce (R) – an easy win for one of the Udall cousins
___Colorado: +1 Rep. Mark Udall (D) vs. ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) – more of a struggle than for his cousin, but still a win
___Minnesota: ? - Al Franken (D) vs. Sen. Norm Coleman (R) vs Dean Barkley (I) – there are conflicting polls here and an independent with substantial support, making this contest difficult to predict
___Louisiana - no change - Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) vs. John Kennedy (R) – the only hope for a Republican takeover of a Democratic seat, but not much of one
10-10:30 PM (EST)
No key contests
11-11:30 PM (EST)
Oregon: +1 - Jeff Merkley (D) vs. Sen. Gordon Smith (R) – upstart Merkley has staked out a narrow but consistent lead and should win
Mid-night – 1:00 AM
___Alaska: +1 - Nick Begich (R) vs. Sen. Ted Stevens (R) – A Mayor beats a man with conviction(s).
___GRAND TOTAL
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