It was November 4, 2008, and I knew the world was changing.
At least I hoped so. It’s so easy in this day and age to be cynical. It’s so easy, in our instant culture of “what’s important today is not important five minutes from now”, to forget when transformative moments happen.
So even though I’ve been a little bit disappointed in the presidency of Barack Obama so far, I think it’s important to take a minute and remember the feeling some of us felt that night.
It had been such a long campaign. I followed it more closely than I had followed anything in my life. Every day felt like another skirmish. What did Hillary say in Indiana? Can you believe the crap the McCain campaign was saying now? It was like a long, tough struggle where you were never really sure if your side was going to win.
I was a John Edwards supporter when the long slog of the ’08 campaign began. I’d been an Edwards volunteer in ’04, and was a huge fan of his. I’m still not really able to come to terms with what we found out about him last summer, so that’s all I’ll say about Edwards.
After Edwards dropped out, I knew Obama was my candidate. He had impressed me throughout the early parts of the campaign, but it was his Iowa victory speech, one of the most inspirational speeches I’ve ever seen, that officially won me over.
And so, the campaign that never ended went on and on, until November 4. I saw some things that night that fortunately I’ll never be able to “un-see.”
I saw an older black woman named Rose who I’d come to befriend, watching the election be called at 11 p.m. and crying her eyes out. She marched in Alabama and Mississippi as a kid, and now … this. I saw white people cry, too, and women and children and old people and everyone from across the spectrum, who never thought they’d live to see the day when hope beat fear, and an African-American was elected leader of the free world. I remember staying up even later than usual that night, not wanting to go to bed.
Not wanting the night to ever end.
I get chills still thinking about it, and got some more watching HBO’s new movie about Obama, “By The People.”
I know Obama hasn’t delivered on all his promises yet, but I’m still hopeful he will.
After the night of Nov. 4, I’ll have hope for a long, long time.
(The video above is a cool thing put together after the election by the great people at DailyKos.com. Kind of a permanent keepsake of that night.)
**OK, and now for something completely different. I love this story. Apparently two 80-something tennis players in Arizona were fighting at the tennis complex of the retirement club they live in, and the cops had to be called. And the cop had to use force to restrain one of them!
And I thought the biggest fights among 80-somethings was whose kids visited less, and which brand of prunes is most enjoyable.
Wide World of Stuff 