Obama '08?

I kind of got the impression he was jealous of the youth because of their young healthy livers. Maybe he can't celebrate a hard as he wishes he could. He did say 21 years old and not 18.

LOL

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I'm only 28, not some old gramps.

That level of excitement and emotional commitment towards a politician concerns me, that's all. I expressed these feelings over a year ago about Obama, and I was just reminded of it again last night.

I saw thousands of people last night who will not; no, CAN NOT, look at Obama from a objective POV. They are too invested in him.

I fear that this level of investment will make it very difficult to bridge the gaps between left/right in our nation.

That being said. I hope his supporters are happy today.

Eh. I don't think Grant Park should be the barometer. That's just pure celebration.

Your vote was ambivalent so it stands to reason that your celebration would be ambivalent. For people who have thought that Obama would be a much better president than McCain, and who have worked hard to help him get elected, seeing him actually get elected is a pretty amazing thing.

I don't think it necessarily translates to not being able to criticize his presidency.

Note, I do think there will be people who voted for him who will be disappointed in him. I think some of them don't fully get what he's about -- expect him to be more liberal than he actually is, for example.

But of course the people who were happy to vote for him are going to be happy when he wins. That's kind of axiomatic.

*****

Last night, both my husband and daughter were especially tired and weren't able to stay up very late. After 9 or so, I watched election returns and celebrated here (A2K) and on Facebook (with friends and extended family). So I didn't really have any real in-person celebration -- until I went to pick up my daughter from school. Then it was this gauntlet, people hugging me and high-fiving me -- it was awesome.

Good points.

....but these people were REALLY happy; like emotionally overwhelmed kind of happy; like "I don't think I've ever been happier in my entire life" happy.

Please don't blast me for saying this (it's been months since I have)....but it really reminded me of the "alter calls" that my church used to do that caused me to question my belief in god, and my subsequently denouncement of any faith.

I am not entirely ambivalent either; I am happy for Obama and I think/hope he will do great things.

I get what you're saying. I just think that while I get the nervousness and see that it could be the same thing -- I don't think it is the same thing.

I just read this, I think it's an element of the euphoria too:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06elect.html

As in, the celebration is about Obama per se ("yay, he's going to be a good president!") but also about an end to the Bush years, finally; and a general sense of progress and accomplishment in terms of race.

That's what kept getting me, yesterday -- the stories of elderly black people who had lived through so much, casting their vote with tears streaming down their face. That's not why I voted for Obama, but it's an awful nice side benefit to all of this. In fact maybe that's WHY that aspect hit me so hard yesterday? Obama was pretty careful to not make his race a centerpiece of his campaign -- even in the speech where he accepted the Dem nomination, on the anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech, where much hay could have been made, he treaded lightly. But yesterday this was just unavoidable, in how emotional it was for so many black people to see this happen. And that emotion was catching.

One last thing -- I think people just like getting together with other like-minded people and celebrating, if they have a chance. Doesn't have to be for a Big Cause or have any particular ideology about it -- when the Packers won the Superbowl in 1997, for example, I celebrated in the streets with some very very happy people.

Also keep in mind how utterly improbable this outcome seemed at the onset of the campaign. When the slot machine pays out, people get excited.

I'm not sure you understand the reaction completely. It isn't just that he won, or how impressively he won, but the fashion in which he won. The excitement you seem to abhor lends itself to the possibility that Obama's political capital might just become overwhelming if people actually continue to pay attention. This opens up the possibilities that terrify the Right, but also the possibility that he could actually use that political capital to push sweeping changes through congress that other CIC's could only dream of.

Just for instance: I believe most lefties (including Hillary and Barack) would like to push Single Payer Health Care into law. Neither could dare suggest such a thing in last year's political climate; but how about next year? I'm not saying he will... I'm saying it may now be possible that he could. This is enormous power and people whose politics align well with his will naturally be excited that he's on the verge of obtaining it.

IF he can keep the American people motivated; he may become not just the 44th President... but perhaps one of the most influential Presidents of our time. There can be little doubt his charismatic persona is inspirational... but the possibility now exists that he can harness that inspiration into massive influence. I’m very cautiously optimistic myself, because of my own pessimism and the realization that enormous power comes with enormous responsibility.

Anyway, this is the reason some of the thinking Right fear him so much... AND why many of the thinking Left is so very excited. Interesting times we live in!

You have big reasons to be only cautiously optimistic. Right now, the fanaticism for Obama cannot be reasoned with. But rest assured there is a sizeable minority out here that still have our heads screwed on straight.

Ah yes, power, funny you mention that, we have limitations on power for host of reasons, on the presidency, on Congress, on the courts, theoretically, by something called the constitution. If and when Obama tries to run rough shod over it, it will be our job to point it out and combat it in whatever ways are at our disposal.

okie, talking about running roughshod over the Constitution I hope Obama and the Dems restore habeas corpus. Bushie currently has the power to aresst any human being including Americans and hold them indefinately without charging them or giving them the right to an attorney and he has the right to torture them as he sees fit. Do you really want Obama to have that power? No man should but I've not heard you complain over it. Thankfully Obama and the Dems have promised to restore habeas corpus.

Yep. There's already a big ground swell demanding that the Obama campaign find a way to keep the Obama groups section of his website and the email LISTSERV running. Game plans are already in the works for the continuing communitiy organizing to renew this country from the ground up rather than top down. We don't want it moved over to the Democratic party's website. We want it to remain outside of the party system.

We did a lot of good work, not just in what we did to get Obama elected, but also locally in our communities. There were a lot of successful neighborhood clean ups, parades, tree plantings, town meetings, house parties and other activities in every corner of the country to focus attention and solving the issues we face.

The Obama groups spawned a lot of new community activists, some who ran for local political offices for the first in their lives, and won due to the groundswell of support given to them.


Newsweek is producing a good series of articles about the Obama campaign. They were allowed access behind the scenes for a year with the Obama campaign.

Here's a link to the first one.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/167582/page/1

Oh, I just came here to post that! Lots of interesting stuff. This is what I was going to post, I love it (and I so saw it in his eyes...):

I've done it myself soz but it is a complete madness. I think trying to make out that it is sane and rational is really off the island.

I'm not saying that the revelers were, while reveling, sane and rational necessarily.

I was saying that it makes sense that they would want to celebrate (and really good celebrations are rarely sane and rational ).

I'm with Brian. You're getting a kick out of buggering about with light bulbs and feeling your virtue.

Brian? You seem to be with Obama there actually ("******* stupid questions").

But whatever.

Careful maporsche... you may upset the old gramps of A2K...

Well, I guess I should say that I was unaware of our age proximity. Where as you would be a clear Gen X, and I am of the transitional Gen Y. We might view the young "millennials" differently.

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Let battle commence The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff shows, above all, that Barack Obama is prepared to fightComments (12) Linda Hirshman guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 06 2008 17.30 GMT Article historyIn one of its first moves, the Obama transition announced today that Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, would be the new president's chief of staff. In addition to the Saturday Night Live payoff of an Emanuel White House " the foul-mouthed ex-ballet dancer who routinely ends his phone calls with "**** you, I love you," makes fellow Chicagoan David Mamet sound like Emily Dickinson " the political significance of the selection is stunning.

Emanuel is the shining example of the take-no-prisoners Chicago Democratic machine, the winning-is-everything organisation that morphed into the Obama campaign. When Emanuel was appointed to run the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the comeback election of 2006, his Republican counterpart remarked nervously that the Democrats were actually going to try to win some elections for a change. You betcha.

The Emanuel appointment reveals much about the direction of the Obama administration. Since the candidacy was built on opacity, ambiguity and generality, this first appointment is disproportionately informative. It shows that Obama is prepared to fight.

This was not obvious. Unlike the Gettysburg Address rhetoric Obama intoned on Tuesday night, the cold exit poll numbers do not reveal that the election of 2008 was a new Gettysburg, as in the battle that changed America. After eight years of the worse governance since James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate increased his percentage of the white vote over Kerry's 2004 performance by a measly 2%, from 41% to 43%. Although the youth vote turned heavily democratic, there was no youth vote surge at all: the youth vote went from 17% in 2004 to 18% in 2008.

The largest factor in the Obama victory was, surprise, the increase in the African American vote, from 11% to 13%, an almost 20% increase in the black vote over 2004, and the increase in the Democratic percentage of the increased black vote from 88% in 2004 to 95% in 2008, for a whopping three-point payoff in the electoral tally overall, with the Democrat taking over 12% of the popular vote from the black voters, versus just over 9% in 2004. An additional point over 2004 from Hispanics, a point from Asians and others, and Obama turned Kerry's defeat into victory. But to say it's the Democratic resurrection seems a little overheated. So it would not be surprising if Obama followed a very cautious path. Especially after all the Lincoln-esque rhetoric of reconciliation the other night.

If Obama wanted caution, he had three paths to take: he could go very easy on the substantive agenda and on the rhetoric, minding Clinton's fatal move into gays in the military, and simply contenting himself with appointing judges and bureaucrats not obviously from Ferdinand Marcos's kleptocracy. He could go easy on substance while using his extraordinary rhetorical gifts to change people's minds about fundamental political matters like race and distributive justice, as he was pushed to do in the campaign. Or he could try to push an ambitious progressive agenda masked by centrist rhetoric and hope that the example of well-functioning progressive programmes will change people's foundational beliefs about their government, like FDR's rural electrification did in the old Democratic South.

The selection of Rahm Emanuel means that at least Obama is not going to take the path of least aggression. Taking an operation, the DCCC, which had mostly just handed a small amount of discretionary money to a handful of locally selected candidates, Emanuel created a political machine in the 2006 elections that was in many ways the real precursor of the famed Obama campaign. Emanuel found candidates no one had even heard of, called them every day on his cell phone, guided them in every detail of their campaigns, sent skilled people to help them plan their campaigns hounded them to raise their own campaign funds and cut them off mercilessly if they did not. The story of Emanuel and the campaign of 2006 is the subject of a book by Naftali Bendavid suitably entitled The Thumpin. It is almost unthinkable that Emanuel would have agreed to set aside his ambition to become speaker of the House of Representatives to preside over a staff that just picks bureaucrats who pass a smell test.

His appointment all but announces that Obama will try to pass some real progressive legislation in the first year. When the subject of Emanuel's possible appointment came up on MSNBC on Wednesday morning, conservative and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough completely lost his composure and began shouting about how that would be the declaration of partisan warfare. As Scarborough recited chapter and verse of Emanuel's offenses against the Republican party from the 2006 campaign, for five full minutes, no one else on his programme, "Morning Joe," could get in a word.

Although Emanuel reportedly has many personal friends on the other side of the aisle, it is worth noting that he has only nine fingers. He lost one when it became gangrenous after an accident and he would not stop his high school activities long enough to have it properly looked after.

Just got an email announcing the official website of President-elect Obama.

http://www.change.gov/

The web folks did a great job!