Reflections on November 4

A little bit from me, a lot more from my friend Janos who has a real knack for heart string tugging commentary. You can probably guess which pieces are mine. Love to everyone, Carrie

I was especially moved by the tragic death that took place yesterday - the passing of Obama's grandmother. I will crudely compare it to the writer of Rent dying the night before its Broadway debut and entrance into history. There is little more than one can achieve in life than having raised young Barack to be the man he is today. Watching Barack grieve over her illness, and ultimately her passing is one more reminder of how human he is. His empathy is strong and real, and it has constantly reminded him of the causes that got him into politics and into this campaign.

Senator Obama reminded us of the people this election is really about in last week's infomercial, which was watched by 26 million people. I teared up during when he spotlighted the man who has to keep working with a torn ACL and Miniscus because his disability benefits during the surgery process couldn't support his family. What slaves have we become that we subject our proud working citizens to endure that kind of physical pain?

Like many of my fellow students I go through the constant ritual of donning a suit and tie and spending 20-30 minutes explaining my qualities strangers, grasping for a job that will justify 21 years of education. I know I'm blessed, and have had great opportunities in life. But in these challenging times, feeling blessed and worried are less mutually exclusive than ever. In large measure, Obama has gotten as far as he has because he is the one man in 2008, Democrat or Republican, who has demonstrated that he can make people hope again, that can make people believe in a brighter tomorrow.

On the buoyant optimism of the Obama campaign - I've noted that it's unlike any other place I've seen, except for Biloxi, Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. In Biloxi, there were no questions about who you were or where you came from, only if you were willing to help. Soldiers and hippies literally worked side by side, fixing houses and eating Salvation Army meals. Catholics, Baptists and atheists sat together in damp meeting rooms for hours figuring how to help rebuild a city. There was no barrier- race, religion, age, or class, that could get in the way of the solidarity.

I hesitate to use the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast as to broad an example of the change we need. After all, much of the coast is still in tatters, especially New Orleans, which very much did fall to the pernicious influence of racial, class-based and territorial factionalism. In Biloxi that great progress of the early years has hit a standstill precipitated by low funds, massive burnout, and short memories. After all, as I sit here writing this, it occurs to me that not a week has gone by when I don't wonder if it was a mistake for me to leave Biloxi before the job was done.

But for all of its flaws, the passion of those early Gulf Coast days was America at its finest, reacting to crisis with a unity of purpose. And the reason I believe Barack Obama can turn to governing with those same winds of common goals and dreams behind him is that he has blown the passage to the American Dream wide open, and in doing so, inspired untold millions. Not just African-Americans, though there is almost no way to underestimate the significance of having our first African-American president. The lamentations of the older black gentry like Bill Cosby has been only half helpful, because the clarion call to turn off the TV and take school seriously was coming from a man who built his career on telling jokes and starring in a sit-com. Now when they turn on the television, African-American children, and all minority youths, will see one of their own in the most powerful office in the country.

Now Obama's bi-racialism has not exactly been a major talking point, and I'm not arguing it won or lost him many votes down the stretch. But you might remember back to the pre-South Carolina days, when the pundits were still wondering if he was "black enough." There was a reason to that. 'If you are black,' political players posited, 'we generally know where you come from. You might have been one of the young lieutenants of MLK's civil rights movement, or Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. You might be one of those smart guys who rose from the projects that we built for you, and built your career as the mayor of a predominantly black city like Newark or Richmond.'

That Obama was not one of these people confused and worried the political establishment, black and white. How could they trust a man if they didn't know the predictable story of where he came from, what his base was, and were his political limitations laid? Bi-racial people don't make sense in the linear American narrative. What Barack Obama has done since 2004, in his constant refrain that his mother is a white woman from Kansas, and his father a black man from Kenya, is remind us that the American Dream applies to literally everyone, no matter how crazy his or her fairy-tale story of success might be.

That brings me to the third realm of his inspiration which is to immigrants, both here and abroad, and foreigners. Addressing the latter groups first- Obama actually explicitly reaches out to them in his speech, challenging America to live up to the standards of those who yearn to reach our shores for our freedoms and opportunities, those who see America is their great last hope. During these hard times, it can be difficult to remember that even through the Bush years, America has remained a beacon of freedom to those who struggle around the world. In New York City, one can recognize this most easily among the taxi-driving population, which is full of proud men who work ungodly hours to send paychecks home to third-world families, in the hope that maybe they can one day be reunited on our shores. And to our old friends in Europe and elsewhere, it will feel good to say, "America is back!" We have all been reluctant ambassadors during the Bush years, saying 'we believe in our country, even if we don't believe in our government.'

Think about his campaign. He wants to end the war in Iraq. He wants universal healthcare. He wants to focus on climate change. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for programs that will help the poor. These are all things our ilk have protested in the streets for. Now we'll have a president who actually agrees with us on our core values. That's crazy, just nuts. Who ever thought that would happen so soon? As for his post-partisanship, that too is real. It doesn't mean he's going to split the baby on every issue, it simply means that he will change the tenor of Washington, to limit slash and burn politics, erode the influence of lobbyists, and return civility to discourse on critical issues. Post-partisan is an approach to governnance not an ideological position.

If Barack Obama has taught us nothing else, it is to stay calm in the eye of the storm. As the McCain camp turns to Joe the Plumber to close out their campaign, Obama closes with the same message he started with, "the same message we had we were up, and the same message we had when we were down." It is a basic message of hope, an affirmation of the best America has to offer. The campaign was historic. The Democratic field was its finest since 1960, maybe ever. Hillary Clinton not only proved to be a bruising campaigner, but her supporters' loyalty ran deeper and wider than anything I could have imagined. Obama is the first nominee in generations who truly left nothing on the table- the electrifying Convention, the speech on race, the fundraising machine, the immediate response media team. He has set such a colossal standard for future Democratic candidates that one wonders how anyone, sans the built-in stature of a Hillary Clinton, could ever expect to even approach it.

And in their final days, the McCain campaign thought they could bring the whole thing down with 'socialism.' The charge wouldn't be worth addressing if here if there weren't a need to expose it for what it really is- a racially charge proxy for "the other". The subject of "socialized medicine" notwithstanding, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton would never be pilloried on charges of socialism in this manner. No self-respecting reporter would dare ask those Democrats to respond to similar charges. And yet, here's Barack Obama with a bi-partisan stable of highly respected economists, his University of Chicago influences, and a tax plan extensively borrowed from the Clinton Era, and yet he might be the one to realize Eugene Debs economics? What the McCain camp is really saying is, 'Obama is a socialist. How much do we know about people like him? After all, brown people (Chavez, Castro, Nassar), yellow people (Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Soviet enemies (Krushchev and Brezhnev) have always been socialist enemies of the United States, so why not Obama too?' The attack ultimately won't work, largely because of the aforementioned 'proof' Obama can trot out. It's just sad that he has to. Perhaps the best line of all came from the great Stephen Colbert, who pressed a Republican pundit, "So if Obama wins, is this an electoral mandate for socialism?" Somewhere Debs was chuckling at that one.

We all had a lot of fun, tortured ourselves with the ups and downs that make politics so riveting and addictive, and generally lived the dream. Tonight we'll sit in living rooms, bars and burlesque halls, watching the results one more time. Watching John King play with his fancy CNN map one last time. Watching the networks call the presidential race for a progressive for the first time in most of our lifetimes.

I'll be thinking of Barack, who is about to spend eight years feeling the weight of the world of his shoulders. I'll be thinking of Michelle, who will bear these challenges with him.

"I have not yet begun to fight," said John Paul Jones.
"The sun also rises," said Ernest Hemingway.
"Sometimes…there's a man," said the stranger.
I'll see you all on the sunrise side of the mountain.