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President Elect Barack Obama.
It’s a strange feeling having supported a candidate without too many reservations. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that – even longer since I’ve done that and they won.
Catherine and I spent a good bit of the evening purposely avoiding our laptops or the news; it’s easy to get into the stress-loop of realtime coverage, and it was definitely one of those situations where the results were out of our hands. Tuning in to see Obama’s acceptance speech was a profound moment, I think. I can certainly understand those who object to some of the policies he’s proposed, and who are concerned about some of the positions that seem to come along with a democratic majority and President. But his speech was one of those moments that people in our generation have never really had an opportunity to witness first-hand.
Here we have a candidate who, for the first time in my political memory, had everything including the kitchen sink thrown at him; yet continued to communicate a message of optimism for the future and hope for how we can deal with difficult times ahead as a nation. We’ll see how he governs as a president, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s a genuinely inspiring thing. The fact that our next president isn’t white (and was born to a single mother, no less) is a pretty remarkable thing in and of itself. The fact that he’s a a gifted orator? It makes me actually look forward to dissecting his statements and speeches and figuring out if I agree with him or not.
I’ve been kicking around a lot of thoughts with the folks from #predicate over the past several weeks and months about how the campaign (both in the primaries and the general) have evolved. It’s a fascinating story, I think, and there’s doubtless time for the armchair quarterbacking and memoir writing. I’ll probably post some thoughts later. For now, though, I’m happy.