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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Progress

For weeks, hopes and polls traveled in opposite directions. What happens to a dream deferred? No one wanted to find out, so millions of people — myself included — willfully ignored Obama’s rising stance in the polls and braced ourselves for the worst.

What happens to a dream deferred? Thankfully, we don’t need to know.

Hope has turned into progress.

Obama feels like my president. Last night, as I watched the reactions of the crowd in Grant Park, I suddenly realized that everyone present felt like Obama is their president. It’s why, when I walked in to my neighbor’s apartment to watch the results he said, “We’re winning.”

For the first time in a long time, millions of people feel like someone powerful cares, and it’s an intensely personal feeling.

I had, in fact, forgotten the supreme racial barriers that were being broken. It seemed like such a non-issue (and indeed it purposely was downplayed)… until I saw the many black faces in the crowd at Grant Park, wet with tears. I can only imagine the pride and relief African Americans must feel. Obama is their president, just as he is mine.

Though I’ve witnessed relatively few presidential campaigns, I have to believe that the differences between these two candidates were more pronounced than in previous elections. Not just differences in their personal traits, but in their campaigns, their organizations, their messages. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, McCain used the word “we” 55 times… Compared to 75 times for Obama’s nomination acceptance speech. Even more telling is that while McCain used the word “I” 114 times in that speech, Obama uttered it only 65 times.

Obama’s campaign, from start to finish, was never about him. It was about us. We the people. He spoke to the deep and the best in us, the rooted human desire for goodness and peace and prosperity, the truth of hard times and sacrifice for the good of all, the things that tie us together.

It is this consistent message of inclusion that brought so many of us, “young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled,” to believe in Obama so intensely, but also to again believe in the United States of America, in our fellow citizens, and in ourselves. It is a message that he must have uttered hundreds of times in campaign speeches, but analyze the election results and you’ll see that it also is the truth. Obama is president for people from all walks of life, not just for me.

Today, I actually believe in that thing… That myth…. That awful cliche…. The American dream.

Posted by Aaron on November 5, 2008 10:01 PM