I want to write up a longer blog entry about What It All Means to me and my family (particularly my Mom in Jamaica, who has been alternating between Obama chants at the top of her lungs and sessions of jubilant crying) but I just can’t collect my thoughts yet, still. I’m a million miles up in the air. For loyal readers, Tuesday night for me was the equivalent of sitting on the sidelines for 1 million Redskins Superbowls, with Jessica Alba on one side and a mile high stack of brand new unread Superman comics on the other.
It was THAT good. So, it’ll come around, but its still too delicious. I pray I never wake up from this one.
Your blog has been a regular stop and a highlight for me during the campaign. Enjoy the elation…well-deserved.
pity the poor guys sat behind that big stack of comics!
While I may not be able to understand just how much this means to you, I am absolutely overjoyed for you – and for the country. I feel blessed to be alive to see a black man become President, and to see hope for our future restored.
Thanks for all the work you did in helping bring this day about!
Thank you, Oliver, for running this blog. I sure have fun here, and YOU HELPED elect Obama!!!!
Oliver, for my money it’s always the personal side to your blogs that bring it home to me and make this site so engaging. And while I can begin to understand your sky-high elation, I have my own.
Who else has discussed what this election means emotionally for white folks? Being (as I’ve confessed) 65, I have memories of marches and pickets but also racist organizations and racist bosses when I had to swallow my outrage and shame, and this feels like a huge weight was just lifted off the white population–O.K., we’re a long way from all the way there, but this is a huge step.
Whoever first identified the “race problem” here as really a “white problem” was dead-on, and the change always had to come from us, internally. Put another way, we so-called WHITE PEOPLE have always been the problem. Obama’s election (not that he isn’t just about IDEAL for the job, and these times) is a big step toward OUR healing, our joining the full-blown, complete human race.
So this single step feels to me absolutely, incomparably terrific.
Yglesias basically wrote that he wasn’t a good enough writer to seriously try and capture this moment in a post. I look forward to reading yours, OW.
Went down and volunteered at the local county democratic office on Wednesday. During the campaign they had more people than they could use, but I got a regular gig there now. No joke.
The best part of this is that we can all share it. This is now, finally, OUR America… all of us. Those photos in the ‘Thank You’ blog brought tears to my eyes. I went back and read King’s ‘Dream’ speech right after it was announced Obama was our President Elect and it brought the predictable shivers and goose bumps all over. I just am so immeasurably happy to see this happen in my lifetime.
Congratulations everyone!
I was trying to explain to my mom the mood in Chicago and I said it was like we’d won the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Stanley Cup all in the same night and then had sex with Jessica Simpson. She did that laugh like, “Okay, crazy liberal daughter that was obviously hatched.”
A random guy high-fived me in the coffee shop when he saw my Obama button. I can’t stand this. We’ve got to get back to road-raging each other and pushing and shoving on the sidewalk soon. This is just weird.
A.
TFJ’s all around, on me!
Oliver, this has been my first site visit of the day for almost 2 years.
Way to go.
Having said that, you gotta do something about the stupid-ass Sodahead.com ads.
I offer a well deserved fist bump to you, Oliver. I stopped posting after the frustrations of the ‘04 election…but I’ve never stopped reading. You’ve carried our flag well. Thank you.
I worked as a poll judge in northwest Chicago and didn’t get home in time to head downtown. Just as well…even watching the TV as he eclipsed the 270 mark had me more emotional than I could believe. I thought maybe it was because I’d not slept in about 38 hours or so…but I’m still getting waves of just plain tear-jerking joy.
Hope lives again…
O-dub… I hear ya, and agree completely. I quite honestly didn’t believe that I would have the ability to vote for, let alone help elect a president who looked like me – for at least another 20 years; just didn’t think America was ready.
My joy however is tempered with the irony that on the same night we elected a Black man to be president; Californians voted to deny their fellow citizens a fundamental right (that had been granted).
There’s much work to be done still… and we can’t forget that while bathing in the afterglow as it were
A lot of folks chuckled at Oprah recommendations, thought Eugene Robinson was the guy who almost lived up to Kenny Easley, forgot about John Lewis’ scars, pondered that Jesse Jackson might partly be in it for the prestige… That all changed pretty quick.
Oliver, you have changed the world. Superman himself could not have moved the mountain…but you did. Congratulations, thanks, and hugs to your Mom. She has reason to be proud of her boy.
Oliver, One of my kids said on Tuesday that she was having the best day of her life. I reminded her that she has said that a few times already, like when we rode horses in Colorado during a camping trip, but that I too, and millions of other people WERE actually having the best day of their life this past Tuesday.
I’ve been telling people I woke up Wednesday morning believing in God and wanting to fly an American flag. Okay, so I’m still agnostic, but I went and bought a flag today. I didn’t own one and can’t even remember the last time I would have wanted to fly one, but we finally got it back. I’ve left my Obama signs up, have the flag flying, and noticed a little while later another American flag flying across the street.
Thanks for your blog—it’s one of the best. Hugs and high fives and terrorist fist bumps to you and yours from everybody at my house.