I won’t try to refute the arguments I’ve read, whether from friends or strangers or professional opiners, against Obama’s candidacy.  He’s been elected, that’s a fact.  Instead, I’d like to employ my postmodern drive to tell stories rather than support propositions and objective truth.  And I’m only being half-ironic.

Let’s assume that you know why I decided to vote for Obama.  You (probably) don’t, but that’s okay.  Just assume it, so you can understand why I, alone in my new home of Burbank, California, invited myself to the election night party of the Burbank Democratic Club.  I got off work at 5 p.m., rushed home to my apartment–and as the apartment complex was also my polling place, I stepped up to the booth and placed my vote.  That task completed, I headed out for a potluck dish to bring to the party.  NPR (fill in your jokes here if you wish) was blasting on my car radio as I waded through traffic, following my GPS’s directions to Ralph’s grocery store.  It was 6:00, then 6:30.  Still in traffic.  About that time, I think, Ohio was called for Obama.

I stopped, turned around, and headed for the party.  At the rate I was going, it would be over before I got the chance to celebrate.

I arrived at the party apologetic, out of breath, and a little scared.  I once was involved in Republican politics in a very non-California state.  Would they shun me?  And of course they didn’t, they assumed I was one of them, a west-coast lefty fully devoted to Trader Joe’s, etc., etc.  I cleared away that assumption rather awkwardly by saying it was my first time voting Democratic, for which I got some satisfied head nods.  A convert, I could hear them saying in their minds.

I got to chatting.  Well, first I got a drink.  Then I got to chatting.

There was a French guy; I’m ostensibly fluent in French but was too embarrassed by my rusty skills to try a conversation in his language.  He was in LA for professional reasons and wanted to find a party of Obama voters to celebrate with.  He didn’t have a vote, but he felt he had a stake.  He told me about his first time voting for the president of France, how he was motivated by fear of student riots and Arab youths.  He didn’t tell me who he voted for, but I figure it was probably Jean-Marie Le Pen or someone of that far-right ilk.  Later, this young man learned that it didn’t pay to vote your fears, that the guys on the opposite side of the aisle (or on the opposite bank of the Seine) really didn’t want their nation to fall into chaos.  There are multiple ways of looking at the world, he told me (I’m heavily paraphrasing), and one’s political opponents merely hold a different point of view on how to fix the country–they’re not actively practicing covert sedition.

Yeah, there’s a lot of my point of view in there.  It’s all a bit hazy, but I’m okay with that.  Let’s move on.

A conversation I’m less hazy about was with a woman about my parents’ age.  Brought up in a Jewish Democratic family, she experienced the suppression of hope in quick succession–before she was 16 years old, she had seen assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK; Vietnam;  Johnson’s downfall; and Watergate.  And yet, with Obama on the cusp of an electoral victory at 7:55 p.m.–just 5 minutes before the polls closed in California–she still couldn’t bring herself to believe it’s happening.  And when the place exploded at MSNBC’s projection for the 44th President of the United States, she shouted the celebrants down, “Projected!  Projected!  Don’t get excited!”  

She was only half-joking; in her, I could see the deeply instilled mistrust of electoral hope.  I understood that her fears came from an unhealthy, post-Watergate mistrust of government, but I also understood that she had heard the cries of “terrorist” and “traitor” at McCain-Palin (mostly Palin) rallies.  I understand that she didn’t want this “transformational figure” (as Powell so eloquently put it) to be shot down by someone who really believes he or she is ridding this country of a Muslim or a terrorist or an “Arab” president.  It wasn’t a rational fear, but it was well-informed–that is, it’s based on historical cause-and-effect.  Think William Randolph Hearst baiting his audiences to gun down McKinley–you release a terrible beast when you play with demagoguery.

But I digress.

Anyway, she calmed down when I showed her that even Fox News had called the election.  Apparently, that was good enough for her, and she was giddy for the remainder of the evening, taking pictures of the television screen.  I predict (project?) that her fears returned the next day, and the next day, and the day after that.  Until Obama’s been sworn in.  Until he’s safely a distinguished ex-president.  And maybe even thereafter.  I share that fear, just a little, but my hope (yes, that cliche) is winning out.

But now I’m getting ahead of myself.  Between digression and getting ahead of myself, this will never get done.

During the ride home, I find myself reflecting on how the afternoon and evening progressed.  It passed so quickly, the victory was called so soon, that I just didn’t have time to consider the enormity of what had happened.  One offhand comment, spoken by one of my elders to another elder, resonated: “This is his man on the moon,” the “his” referring to me.  And it makes sense: when you consider all the historical garbage that the boomers had to live through–the assassinations, the wars, the scandals–the 1969 moonwalk stands out as a beacon of real progress.  No, not the only beacon, far from it, but it quite definitely qualifies.  It was an achievement that you couldn’t ignore, and a national achievement at that.  One glorious day when unambiguous American pride was warranted.

It fits here, too.  I remembered that wonderful, funny, dizzy feeling I had when I saw the first projections come in: Vermont for Obama, Kentucky for McCain.  No surprises, to be sure, but it hit me, An American state just put their votes behind a black man for president.  I remembered leaving the polling place, my ballot receipt in hand, feeling that surely this moment is one that I can be patriotic.  The Bush administration had sucked it all out of me–the utterly unqualified (though basically honest) Texan so wedded to his bleak conservatism that he twice vetoed children’s healthcare and nearly vetoed the newest iteration of the GI bill.  I wasn’t just sick of the Republicans, I was just plain sick, post-Watergate sick.  And John McCain had made me sicker with his consistent abandonment of the principles that once made me admire him–that, surely, was an even greater disappointment to me than Bush’s incompetence, because I felt personally betrayed by McCain.  For 8 years I defended him as a “maverick” and a hero and a man of honor, and he turned his back on immigrants, on the environment, on campaign ethics, on common sense.  I’m getting far afield from my topic sentence here, but the point I want to get at is that the weeks leading to the election left me hungering for change, real change.  Watching the early projections in my cubicle, beaming with awkward patriotism when leaving the voting booth, clapping my hands with Burbank Democrats–I felt the change actually happen.  My generation had not only elected an astute, intellectual, qualified statesman to the highest office in our country–traits we needed oh so badly–but we proved we could look past the worst parts of our nation’s history and thereby remake history.  And yes, I’m proud.  And yes, I do have some measure of hope.  I hope it will be fulfilled with real, positive change, but this moment is good enough for me, for now.