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Meghan: I hadn't noticed that in his opening catalogue of binary-distinctions-beyond-which-we-must-move, Obama didn't mention that most primal of all binaries: men and women! That does seem like an extraordinary omission, one that I'd almost think was an accidentally skipped line (was he reading from a teleprompter there in Grant Park?) if it weren't for the ultra-precise and carefully calibrated delivery of the entire speech. Obviously Obama is, ideologically speaking, a feminist, but it's odd that rift in the electorate--which defined his primary campaign as much as any other factor--didn't spring more immediately to mind.
But how incredible that you got to be standing in Grant Park with all the other men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, etc., on that historic night. The frisson of awed patriotism you describe is exactly the mood evoked by this Whitman quote, from Leaves of Grass, sent to me the morning of election day by a friend who has a way of finding the perfect poem for every occasion:
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:
This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day...
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Dana, I also noticed the lack of any mention of Hillary in Barack's speech. There was another notable absence, too. Early in the speech, Barack spoke about how last night's results were an "answer" to those who doubted America's democracy. He then said: "It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled." Well, hello. How odd not to mention "women and men" in this list, since that division speaks to the only other historically significant part of this election year: Namely, a woman almost became the presidential nominee. Granted, Obama later spoke about Ann Nixon Cooper's having borne witness to not only the advent of civil rights but the suffrage of women. Still, I wished that he had given a nod to women in that early part of the speech—especially since his message all along has been about unity and healing.
That's the only kvetching I'll do. Last night, I stood in Grant Park with hundreds of thousands of other Americans and found myself experiencing a wave of patriotism and pride as never before. When CNN announced Obama had won, strangers hugged and kissed; black men and white men shook hands; and when the speech was over the crowd rolled down Michigan Avenue, slightly dazed and narcotized with joy. Spontaneous cheers broke out ever few minutes, whenever an El train went by, with the energetic unity Whitman described in his healing paean to democracy, Song of Myself, a poem written at a moment of cultural divisiveness rivaling the one we just lived through.
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Did anyone else notice that Obama’s victory speech last night (which started out a little stiff and stump-speech-y, I thought, then soared to the firmament with that Ann Nixon Cooper kicker) never mentioned Hillary Clinton? Believe me, this isn't PUMA resentment speaking—he was by no means obligated to mention the woman who ran a fierce, interminable, and at times dirty campaign against him, and he may well have had good political reasons for not doing so. I just don’t understand what those reasons were. After all, it was a speech about getting past the old resentments and limitations, and as Obama pointed out, the 106-year-old Cooper was born disenfranchised for two reasons: She was black and a woman. After the rhetorical valentine he'd just sent out to McCain, who spent the past two months framing him as a shady, dangerously naive socialist, why not reach out to Hillary supporters with an acknowledgement of the politician who tempered his campaigning steel in the primaries? Was it just a matter of keeping any hint of old-school Clinton politics at bay?
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The first thing my son (who is so not a morning person) said when he woke up today, with the biggest smile on his face, was President Obama! I don't think he could have been any happier if Steven Spielberg had dropped by to talk shop. But have you noticed the number of (much) older Obama supporters who are relieved, awed, exhausted, and proud, but also unexpectedly ... quiet? As if after years of outrage, it's going to take a minute to register the enormity and import of what just happened; how is it one behaves, again, when the country appears to be setting off on the right track? When negative campaigning is not rewarded and baser instincts resisted from sea to sea? A pal with whom I've been watching election returns since our supersized shoulder-pad days came over last night, as per tradition. And this is someone who not only gave to Obama until it hurt but had been out door-knocking for him, in Virginia, every weekend for months. Yet when Ohio told the tale, we were so stunned, we never did open the vintage Dom she'd brought over. Another friend who's been working for Democratic candidates and causes his entire adult life just called to say he is wandering around in a park somewhere, not knowing what to call the way he is feeling: "I've waited so long ...'' Oh, we'll process this, I'm confident, but who knew winning wouldn't automatically compute? Maybe if I hadn't been a Cubs fan, too?
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Last night I woke my 9-month-old baby—fast asleep in her Obama shirt—to watch the acceptance speech. My computer cord shorted out in a giant tumbler of champagne. I wept, and then wept again, and then wept again; Jesse Jackson's tears jerked my own the hardest. For the first time in my life, people took to the streets in celebration of something good, something I believe. If the adage is true that we get the government we deserve, then we have made ourselves, finally, to be something deserving, after all. It is the first time in my life I believe in my country. Barack Obama made me, and millions of us, do that.
"It's been a long time coming," he said last night. Those words lead off the refrain to Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," which has been playing in my head since, as I check and recheck the headlines to convince myself that this is history, not reverie. The song has sounded like a dream ever-deferred. Today, it feels more like a lyrical journey to what led us here and a reminder that just as we've crossed that distance, so we might advance more, after all this time moving backward. Holding my baby on my lap last night, I was most particularly moved, like Dahlia, by Obama's account of the century Ann Nixon Cooper has witnessed in her 106-year march to yesterday's vote.
I have no doubt that Obama has the deepest regard for the shoulders that he stands upon today. But if this is going to be a true victory for all of us, he must summon that regard not just to the black America that has endured a painful journey, from slave auctions, to the bullets that ricocheted through the Audubon ballroom, to this day. He'll have to address the continued erosion of civil and human rights. In the same country that has elected this extraordinary man, African-Americans constitute 49 percent of our prison population (compared with 13 percent of our total population). More black men are incarcerated than are in college. The average black life expectancy has declined to what it was in 1970. A recent study on the housing crisis concludes that "the subprime lending debacle has caused the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern U.S. history." Obama did not campaign on these issues, but to make good on the moral promise of his presidency and not just the symbolic one, he will need to focus on the specific challenges to African-Americans as well as all Americans.
The New York Times says today, "No Time for Laurels; Now the Hard Part"; I say this is a moment to bask in what we have delivered unto ourselves. I plan to keep crying and playing Sam Cooke for my baby for at least another few days. But in listening to Cooke's words, I must remember that this election hasn't closed the book. Rather, by turning the page, we're still pushing through the same narrative, chapter by chapter.
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Despite all else—the good news, for instance, that South Dakotans rejected harsh restrictions on women's uteri, and Colorado laughed at the idea that a fertilized egg is a person—let me just add how deeply sad I am that in Proposition 8, California's 38 million people decided, 52 percent to 48 percent, that two women or two men should not have their marriages recognized by the law. In the last few weeks, when the polls got close, I was extremely worried. The much-discussed Bradley effect may not actually exist, but a "homo effect" does. When LGBT issues go up for a popular vote, that vote has usually run about four points more against us than pollsters predict. The (barely) good news is that the effect has shrunk: The result was only 2 percent worse than predicted. But a loss is still a loss.
There's lots to say, and maybe I will pull out of my sadness and say it another time. Important to remember that California is an enormous and complicated state, more populous than Canada, as diverse as the nation politically. For instance, it has the largest Mormon population outside Utah and a large evangelical megachurch base. Its vast poor and rural stretches have opinions that differ greatly from those of San Franciscan liberals. And so while some counties went overwhelmingly in favor of retaining same-sex marriage, the more conservative counties went overwhelmingly against. Men were against same-sex marriage while women were 50-50; younger people were (overwhelmingly) for same-sex marriage while older people were against.
I am sad even though I know that, in 20 years, that vote will go the other way—maybe even in 10. Much sooner than that, I believe, some other American state will join Massachusetts and Connecticut (and Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain—and, as of last spring, Norway) in opening up the M-word to same-sex pairs. And I am sad even though this wasn't a total rejection of same-sex unions: California's domestic partnership law is the equivalent of Vermont's civil unions, as comprehensive a set of recognitions and protections as you can get, short of the M-word itself—and California voters have let that stand.
Still, it stings to be told that your ability to love is not worthy of the word marriage. You can commit yourself for life, raise children together, pray over your sick beloved's body in the ER, or have the same argument for years about whose relatives you visit on Thanksgiving, but get the state's recognition that it's a real marriage? Nope. It's painful.
Guess I'm staying in Massachusetts—where my neighbors are still overwhelmingly proud to be first—after all.
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It wasn't at the top of my mind, but I did wonder how the incumbent would respond last night—just as I've found myself wondering over the last two months what it could possibly feel like to be a sitting president whose eight years are now almost universally prefaced by the adjective "disastrous." Bush's opponents use it, and so do his supporters, and even if he never reads any newspapers—and seems barricaded out of sight these days—it's hard to believe he has been insulated from the devastating verdict.
Yet to carry on, I suppose he has to be, on some level, deaf to it and to the drama of a succession that is about, front and center, his own failure. Certainly his congratulatory message to Obama last night sounded singularly out of tune—and not just because it was a night on which the candidates themselves so eloquently captured the spirit of historic significance. "What an awesome night for you, your family, and your supporters. You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself.'' From the adolescent "awesome" to the self-actualizing bromides to the flippant "go enjoy yourself" (what phrase did he really have mind?), the well-wishing was unsettlingly off-pitch. So off-pitch that I wonder if we could be hearing the deep bitterness of a man belatedly aware of how derailed his own journey has been.
But-how disorienting is this: We don't have to think about him anymore.
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Some small observations in the spirit of Melinda’s post on Elizabeth Dole: Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., is out. Virgil Goode, R-Va., looks to have lost in a squeaker. That last-ditch attack ad flopped. South Dakotans defeated Measure 11, which would have prohibited abortions except in absurdly limited cases and was meant as a test rocket to take down Roe v Wade.
Maybe we really can bend the arc of history.
My favorite part of Obama’s speech tonight was the guided tour through the amazing 106-year lifetime of Ann Nixon Cooper. It forced me to catch up with so many of you who were already seeing this election through the eyes of your children. It made me see that the world in which my sons will grow to adulthood will be unrecognizable to me. Just as Ann Nixon Cooper moved from a time before cars to voting on a touch screen, my kids are going to look back at the ways we have talked about race and gender and class and geography this year and laugh. Probably as they speed off on their X-wing starfighters. And the part I have yet to fully absorb? It's not just that, as Obama said tonight, “America can change.” It’s that my kids will wake up tomorrow morning in a fundamentally different world than the one they went to sleep in.
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Oprah cried, Jesse Jackson cried, and John Lewis said he had no tears left. Our next first lady whispered, "I love you" to her husband, who didn't seem to want to let her go even when it was time to leave the stage. Michelle Obama's mom, Marion Robinson, was kvelling for all of them. And our next president was appropriately sober; bringing us together is going to be hard. But a little easier because the crowd that came to hear President-Elect Obama cheered readily at his bow to John McCain. When he spoke of moving people "to put their hand on the arc of history and bend it once more to the hope of a better day," I really could dare to hope that even people who can't look at him without shouting at the television might take a breath and give him a chance.