It was two years in the making. Election 2008 is over, but nothing will ever be the same after January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th POTUS. There was only one person I wanted to share this Obama moment with: my daughter, who gave me the first sip of the “Obama Kool-aid.”
I caught up with her only to find that she had dropped everything including her child with her husband to be in Chicago to watch history up close and personal. I called her to apprise her of the race so far for the man and his family whom she calls “just like us” while she was driving herself to Grant Park in Chicago for the midnight Obama rally. She called me last week to say that she was making a list of ways and values that her family had in common with the Obama Family. My daughter takes her politics seriously. We shared a laugh as I told her “that no kind of nobody” is predicting anything but an Obama win—BIG! I advised her not to rush to the rally because by the time they took the train from Oak Park and got settled Obama (and company) would be walking out as president-elect and McCain likely conceding by 11:00 p.m. from his front lawn in Arizona.
By 8:30 p.m. I couldn’t wait: I had to call her back “Obama’s killing McCain!” I feel sorry for him, Obama is already at 175. She screamed with delight. Here’s my favorite map to follow tonight…unbelievable. I’ll wait until she has arrived safely in Chicago, afraid she might drive off an embankment with excitement. Besides sharing this night with my family in Chicago I thought that on the eve of this electoral reckoning it was also a time of forward looking as well as looking back. I love reading and making predictions…flexing those spiritual and mental muscles keeps them working well into old sage.
To that end, I looked over a couple of articles and past comments written about the time that Obama was considering his candidacy. When other pundits wrote Obama off I was furiously writing about him; digging up as many physics metaphors that I could fit inside the nucleus of the Obama atom—enter intrigue. The pundits and bloggers split the atom and split the hairs about how he was a mere “community organizer” and “empty suit” with a “thin resume” a “non-black black man” and finally the Sisyphean “he’s a Muslim, with a crazy preacher.” How much sense that makes, I’ll let you know on November 5th.
It’s integral to this race within a race that anyone could survive that many mean monikers. It makes this political coup of the century sweet. Obama showed them how it’s done. And I am proud to have been along for the ride when he decided to be the catalyst for change. And it was this writer’s singular job to help smooth the path and increase the positive reaction of Americans for election 2008.
When columnists and politicos wrote McCain off, I did not. I said specifically “don’t write off McCain…he will be back.” And then at the same time, summer 2007, I saw a huge breakaway in the choice of VP on the Republican side. I thought it would be a switcheroo, and in a sense it was. While one candidate did not replace another, as in a past election, a mindset was changed. It came out of the blue after Obama rejected Clinton. The door was left open for a woman, not just any woman but an outdated, old-fashioned, folksy woman whose natural beauty and grit dazzled the crowds and the media. In a move one blog critic called “committing political suicide brilliantly” Heloise thought it was more like: obsoletism over elitism. Brilliant indeed.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - BOB
NICE GOING AMERICA..THE FIRST POST 9/11 PRESIDENT BORN A MUSLIM WITH A BACKGROUND THAT WOULD NOT ALLOW HIM TO WORK FOR THE FBI OR ANY NATIONAL SECURITY POSITION...FAD MAN AMERICA..HOW WELL PUT ..NO YOU IDIOTS WILL GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU VOTED FOR AND IT WILL NOT BE PRETTY.
2 - steve
We are now officially a nation of fools! If the younger population of voters did indeed put him over the top, then this nation is in even worse trouble than it would seem. If indeed a group of basically illiterate and uninformed individuales have that much influence in this country, then we are all doomed!!
3 - El Bicho
steve, if you think that is how you spell "individuales," the illiterate and uninformed one is you.
4 - zingzing
yay... here i am totallty shitfadeced,. yay o-bam-a. we are coool. you guys suck. there
5 - Jordan Richardson
It's Obama, Steve & Friends. He will be your President. And he will be a damn good one, too. He was voted in by an overwhelming majority, representing that the tide in America is truly changing.
Finally. Thanks for catching up with the rest of us, America. And congratulations as well.
Yes, we can.
6 - daniel
you cant put a black man in a white house
get a grip america
7 - Karl
God bless America!!!
NOT
8 - Lisa Solod Warren
Interesting comments. Obama won a mandate. A majority of the POPULAR vote, a HUGE number of electoral votes. He swung traditionally Republican states in the midwest like Iowa. He swung Indiana. He swung Virginia, which had not voted Democratic since 1964. He got New Hampshire. Look at the map.
And still.... people talk about it ss if the Liberals elected him.
The People of the USA elected him. He cut a wide swath across the country.... brining old and young and rich and poor and middle class and white and black and hispanic all togeather. Independents and Republicans and liberal and conservatives and moderates...
Amazing. And yet there remains hate and vitriol from those who lost.
Both Obama and McCain asked that those who "lost" try and find a place to see if they can fit in and see if we can all work together. I think Obama will be much less left wing than any of you worry about and very very interested in ideas from anyone intelligent and thoughtful enough to offer them. I think he will try and form a coaltion of people who really want to try someting new and different for a change: which was what his mandate is all about.
Put away the hate and sit back and take a deep breath. Sit on the racism and see if perhaps a half black/half white man can do something all white men haven't been able to do for past many years.
9 - bbfp
Can't be any worse than what we've put up with for 8 years. Bye hate and war mongerers. Hello good times. Isn't it ironic how 7 years after going after Saddam Hussain, God put a Husain in the White House, by outstanding US votes. I think American people can see through the disillusion that the hate mongerers are putting out there. Just remember truth prevails. In your face haters!
10 - Lisa Solod Warren
I am just happy all the shit that was thrown by the Repubs didn't stick..... It was such a nasty campaign. But the majority showed that the Robocalls and the bullshit about his being a terrorist and a Muslim and all that was just what it was, bullshit...
Whew.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Heloise -
Back when Obama won Iowa, I was shocked. I had assumed until that point that it was going to be Hillary vs. Some Republican...but Iowa! The idea that a mostly white state could vote for Obama...
...it was the day after the Iowas caucus that I was sure it was going to be Obama vs. McCain.
But I was against Obama - I became a Hillary alternate delegate to the Washington state Democratic Convention. It wasn't that I didn't think Obama would be a great president - I DID. I knew even then that he would be a better president than Hillary; he would probably be one of the all-time great presidents. It's just that I'm greedy - I wanted sixteen years of good Democratic presidents, not eight. If Hillary was elected, that would give us eight years for her to clean up Bush's mess, eight years of more experience for Obama, who would surely win after her.
But it didn't work out that way, and perhaps that's for the best because Hillary - as highly as I think of her - could never hope to unite the country and the world as well as Obama could.
Hillary was sure to win - but no one could have foreseen the force of nature that was Obama. Instead of a very, very good president, we will have a truly great president. I just hope she's still able to run in 2016....
12 - Lisa Solod Warren
This is lovely.
13 - Dave Nalle
Lisa, perhaps you'd get more positive responses about the outcome of the election if you stopped calling people who have serious issue-based differences with Obama 'racists' all the time.
It really, really wasn't about race. It rarely is.
Dave
14 - Lisa McKay
Dave, I suspect that Lisa was responding to comments #1 and #6 which are certainly doing a good impression of being rooted in racism. I agree that it's not always about race, except, of course, for the times when it is.
15 - Lisa Solod Warren
Obviously, Dave. Good Lord. Why don't you read????? I hardly ever call people racists except when they express racists views, which those clearly were. Ie., "born Muslim, bla bla bla," "you can't put a black man in the white house."
Thanks, Lisa. I certainly was. And they certainly were.
Ugly little comments, those were. Especially yelling in all caps....
16 - Ruvy
The Obama supporters on this site (not to mention across the United States) got what they wanted. Heck, even I got what I wanted, though I do not count myself as any kind of supporter of Barack Obama. But, once the bottles of liquor are drunk, and once the partying is over, reality, and the issues that the United States must face, always comes back.
There is always the issue of whether he will be allowed to assume office, something which seems automatic now, but which may not be. Then, assuming he does assume office, there are the problems that an American government under his leadership will be expected to solve.
Demonstrations are great highs. I went to enough of them to know. Today, those who bought the Obama bottle of snake oil and drank deeply are feeling wonderful. But the highs of demonstrations do not solve systemic crises in the American economy, or deal with the serious mess that the Bush administration has left around the world. And believe me, the mess is bad.
These essential issues will require an article (or two) to look at, and some thought.
But, since I, my neighbors, and my fellow countrymen will be affected directly by this election, and by the promises that Mr. Obama has already apparently made here, even though we live a third of a world away, trust that I'll have something to say.
In the meantime, I did want Obama to be your president. Now, I have to take advantage of the opportunity you have so kindly given me to use his presence. So, my work begins....
17 - bliffle
#6 -- November 5, 2008 @ 04:59AM -- daniel
you cant put a black man in a white house
get a grip america
But I have a dream, that someday a President will be judged by the quality of his character and not by the color of his skin.
18 - Clavos
George Bush and Richard Nixon are evidence that having character is not a requirement for being POTUS.
19 - Carri
I sincerely hope that people are as fanatical about watching the job he does as they were about getting him elected. I think that the phrase "drinking the Obama kool-aid" is particularly apt. He may be a good man and he may turn out to be a great President, but he is just a man, NOT THE SAVIOR. All the proselytizing that has been done on his behalf makes me extremely nervous.
20 - Heloise
Glenn believe it or not Obama was seen as a vision and THE WAY was being made for him in Chicago since the 1970s by black middle class folks there. You have no idea unless you grew up in middle class black Chicago, and/or read my book where I talk about the electricity and cultural traditions upheld there.
Black people with vision, remember people who have no vision perish, actually SAW this win for as long as the past ten years. WE DID SEE IT COMING.
It was everybody else who did not see it coming. I also forsee a transformation of those who will be in the WH with the new POTUS. You have no idea of the transcendent wave about to electrify Americans, black, white and chicano. We are just getting started.
My people heard the call: Vote like your life depended on it. Heloise urged them. And when Hillary was running, I hope we did not overdo it, I told black folks that to NOT vote for Obama would be racial genocide or suicide, can't recall the word I used.
And Jesse Jackson is crying like a baby in Grant Park...too much.
Heloise
21 - Heloise
The Obama Greeting: are you doing it? As an underground anthropologist I often have a front seat to any new cultural wave. This one is starting to break across the country. Students and adults simply say "Obama" and fist bump or not.
Did you know that the word "Hello" comes from a swahili word "Hodea" something like that. Have to look up the spelling. But in Africa they used a greeting so that people would know that someone was coming up to them without startling them.
Go Obama
Heloise
22 - Heloise
Wave bye-bye to Bush "capital"
First the Doctrine: "Writing in these pages after 9/11 but before the invasion of Iraq, the political scientist David Hendrickson explained the logic of the Bush Doctrine as a "quest for absolute security." Unilateralism and a strategic doctrine of preventive war were the key elements of this futile search. Hendrickson argued that these were "momentous steps," standing in "direct antagonism to fundamental values in our political tradition," which threaten "to wreck an international order that has been patiently built up for 50 years, inviting a fundamental delegitimation of American power." Mike Lampton on "China's response to the Bush Doctrine"
Also wave bye-bye to "Spending political capital": Today as in 2000 Bush said he earned politcal capital and he was going to damn well spend it. Oh really?
Heloise please...
23 - Heloise
No secret agents, no problem...McCain's SS bites the dust at 6:00 a.m. today.
We feel your pain McCain...Heloise please shut up
24 - Heloise
"Folks, those final four states are laughing all the way to the political bank..." from Last Tango In Texas. Rachel on her show just said that Dean was "laughing all the way to the politcal bank."
Heloise
25 - Sam Coriat
Where was the common sense among the US Electorate?
It was their second strike right after the mistake with Bush who lost the popular vote but won the Electorate vote. One error after another while we must suffer their mistakes...
Why did Obama hide his middle name among other things?