When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 my first thought was “my grandfather didn’t live long enough to enjoy this.” I was reminded of this thought recently while reading lots of the articles and blogs about Obama’s reelection and the corresponding shell-shocked Republicans.
This doesn’t have anything to do with my grandfather’s politics, he was not only a life-long Republican; he hated FDR with a passion. When the Red Sox won I reveled in all the stories about the players, the games, the statistics. I may have overdone it but I had waited so long, all those years watch ballgames with my grandfather, I was going to enjoy it fully.
As a life-long Democrat, I am going to enjoy all the schadenfreude I can get. As I get older, I’ve come to believe that good moments are fleeting and they should be enjoyed to the fullest. Holding back from enjoying the good times when they come don’t make you hurt any less during the bad times. I actually have real empathy for most Republicans right now, I remember 2004 and how I knew how awful a president George W. Bush was. I thought that after Abu Gharib that he would lose for sure and I’m still not quite over that.
Thinking about my grandfather naturally led me to think about my grandmother and how much she would have loved this election. As a Northeast old style Republican and member of the 1% I think she might have struggled with an African-American president, but she was capable of real learning. She watched all the Watergate hearings on television all that summer of 1973 and reluctantly decided that all those nice boys with proper haircuts, Halderman and Erlichman, were lying and Nixon needed to go. Additionally, to her dying day she was always strongly pro-choice. She would not have had any patience for Murdoch in Indiana or Akin in Missouri and would be rejoicing with me over their losses.
I suppose these musings are my way of saying how this election is one for the ages. Barack Obama and the Senate winning are important, like waiting a lifetime for a World Series victory.