Reflections on the Election
Written by John Erianne on November 5, 2008 – 11:38 am -
I woke-up early yesterday morning. I was like a kid at Christmas. I’ve never looked forward to casting a vote as much as I did this year. I’ll admit it — I am one of those cynical Americans Barack Obama often referred to on the campaign trail. And, after eight years of Bush, I’d just about given up any hope that this country had any future. I would pivot between rage and apathy. George W. Bush made me ashamed to be an American. Bush’s America was small and petty and cruel and fearful and not the America I’d been taught to believe in as a child. Barack Obama restored my good feelings about this country and about my own citizenship. And so, it was with that good, warm and fuzzy feeling that I cast my vote for the Obama/Biden ticket and spent a good portion of the remainder of the day sitting on pins and needles waiting for the polls to close and the results to pour in. Once they called Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida it was a foregone conclusion that Senator Obama would become President-Elect Obama and, ultimately, the 44th President of these United States.
As everyone else celebrated (many dancing in the streets), the commentators on Fox News were in shock. Despite the fact that for weeks, the polls clearly indicated that Obama would win easily, I think Brit Hume and company really believed that there no way in hell the United States would ever elect a black man. That the chants of “socialist,” “terrorist” would scare people into embracing McCain. That Joe the Plumber somehow represented “real America” and would convince voters in a way that McCain couldn’t. But that’s just it. Fox News and the Republican Party live in a bubble when it comes to this country. There are lots of reasons why McCain lost this election, but the main reason probably has little to do with McCain himself and a whole lot to do with the fact that the party in power has been a party of exclusivity. If you don’t agree with the far right-wing philosophy there is no place for you at their table. The most tragic thing about the Bush years, beyond the war in Iraq and the collapsing economy — beyond Katrina and the narrow social agenda of the religious right is that the vast majority of us simply became outcasts in our own country. One of the things Barack Obama was able to tap into is the fact that we are not really a country of “blue states” and “red states.” This is not strictly a center-right country. Our political and social make-up is much more complicated than that.
I don’t know that Obama will live up to his promise — politicians so rarely do. But if anyone can rise to genuine greatness, Barack Obama has a head-start on most. He’s already done the impossible: He made the most cynical among us feel like Americans again.
