Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Yes We Did!

What has epitomized Obama's campaign from beginning to end is its feeling of can-do - a feeling that each individual can make a difference. Yes we can! embodies this feeling, and is the slogan that sent the powerful message to America and to the world that united, Americans of many different persuasions can come together and help start the process of change.

Obama's acceptance speech last night indicated his understanding that this only marks the beginning. You'd have to be naive to think this financial crisis is going to fix itself. And that's just the most obviously pressing crisis right now. The first step has been taken.

Today I felt myself stand noticeably straighter. Noticeably prouder. In addition to seeing the first candidate in my life win who I genuinely support, believe in and wanted to win (and not just because he wasn't the other guy), there's a sense of having made history. It's a little easier to say to the world, hey, you could learn something from us - we've still got what it takes.

On a local level, my state voted to legalize medical marijuana and to allow stem cell research (my dad worked on the stem cell research proposal). Really delighted about both of those.

The one dark cloud over this election cycle is gay marriage. It seems inconceivable that so many Americans are opposed to allowing two people who love each other to get married in the courthouse. No one's trying to get the Catholic church to marry gay couples, and I think the deliberate conflation between civil and religious marriage is what's getting people riled up. Arkansas also decided to ban adoption by gay couples, another blow to gay rights.

I'm still coming to grips with the reality that Obama is going to be my next President. It was at about 9 pm, Geneva time yesterday, when I finally realized that Obama was going to win this. Since then, I've been floating around on cloud 9. Months of agonizing and obsessively reading political blogs will be replaced by just obsessively reading political blogs.

*happy sigh*

1 Comments:

Blogger Jennie said...

indeed!

and i'm glad you're blogging again! :)

5:17 PM  

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