It's an incredible feeling to wake up to a democratic President-Elect, larger House and Senate majorities and a general feeling that, truly, "Yes we can, and we did".
I canvassed this weekend, taking my 6 year old daughter with me. On election day I worked the the voter protection program at a local poll, and had the ability to watch history being made before my very eyes. Standing there for 13 hours, watching almost every person that voted in my precinct, I made an interesting observation. You could, for the most part, tell whom a person was voting for, before they even showed their voter registration card. The Obama voters, for the most part, walked up to the polling room with a look of excitement, a desire to vote for who they believed would be making our country, and world a better place. Many, if not most, of those who were voting McCain had a look of grim determination as though they were simply voting against someone, rather than proudly casting a ballot FOR a candidate.
I watched first time voters, white, African American, Asian American, young, old.... all walks of life...proudly request that first ever ballot for a Presidential election. Mother and faters, sometimes together sometimes alone, brough their children to be a part of what they viewed as history, a pivotal change in the American Experience.
Our precinct closed on time, votes were tallied and delivered to the Supervisor's office. I got home at 8PM, wy wife and children were watching the early returns, the excruciating wait for all of the early "Too Close to Call" battleground states dragging on for what seemed to be forever.
Once the wave of blue began to wash across the northeast and midwest, I, for the first time in this campaign, allowed myself to actually believe that we, as Democrats, might pull this one off. At 11PM, "The Call" was made. After allowing the "chocked up" reaction to subside somewhat, I quietly woke my 6 year old, the little girl who is so poltically astute that she's canvassed with me, placed signs with me and has been as much of a political junkie in this campagin as I have. I whispered to her, "It's done, Barack won". It was like watching a kid at Christmas, she got a big smile, said "I knew he would" and contentedly drifted back to sleep.
She awoke this morning, her first question was "Was I dreaming, or did Mr Obama win?" I told her "you weren't dreaming, sweetheart, and now you can call him President Elect Obama".