Man, that was awesome.

I got a bit emotional last night, after the polls closed on the west coast, and they declared Obama the winner.

Watching unheard-of-large crowds turn out in Grant Park and NYC, just to watch election returns, made the hair on my arms stand up.


Know this -
I've been an Obama supporter since he announced he was running for president.
I find something in Hilary Clinton personally repellent. I hoped beyond hope that Obama would somehow beat her in the primaries.
If he had not done so, I would not have voted yesterday.

I was a fan of McCain in 2000. His campaign tactics and message, and vp candidate choice this go-round were repugnant to me.
Let's get us a girl to run as vp, cuz a girl just lost the bitterly fought primary on the other side.
So they went out and found the most vacuous, annoying and least qualified female politician they could.
And then the campaign just got sillier and sillier.

Not at any time were we given a clear, positive message as to why we should vote for them. Instead, we were told to be afraid, that his opponent didn't love america like us folks do, that he's a terrorist hugging baby killing commie that's gonna take all my hard earned money and give it to folks who don't work for a living. Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid. And don't pay attention to our own past transgressions, connections to whacko churches, friendships with people like Liddy, Keating five scandals, et al.

Nope. just pretty please be afraid. Oh, and Obama's middle names Hussein, and you KNOW what THAT means....

Fuck you. Selling fear to the rubes worked long enough to drive us all collectively into a ditch, it's not going to work this time around.
Take your mean-spirited vaguely racist bullshit hyperbole elsewhere, we're not willing to eat any more of it.

As a white guy who's been pissed off about our political situation for eight years; a guy who was way ahead of the curve on being against the Iraq war, way ahead of the curve in knowing that our current president is, basically, a moron; a guy who has been personally offended on a moral and ethical level by a seemingly constant stream of lies and bad behaviour on the part of republican officials; I firmly believe that any halfway competent democrat that ISNT H. Clinton, could have won this election.

I'm very glad that the person to do it is Barack Obama, but hundreds of thousands of new registered voters, record voting turnout, and the aforementioned crowds gathered just to watch election returns, is not because the dem candidate was black, or a female, or a circus midget, as much as it is about how disgusted, finally FINALLY, the majority of Americans have become with the way things have been run.

Coupled with an amazingly well run campaign, and eloquent, intelligent public speaker who talked of hope and of all of us coming together to restore America to what it should be.

President-Elect Obama, if you are even ½ as genuine as you appear to be, I'm very excited for the next four years. And holy crap, but I am relieved that the painful ordeal of the Bush years is finally drawing to a close.