A view from a resident of a red town in a blue state.

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Tuesday November 04, 2008 · 9:10 PM PST

2008/11/04 · 21:10

I am a lifelong progressive that has been a registered voter since I was 19 (I'm 41 now). I live in Hazleton, PA, a red town in a blue state - a town you may have heard of from the recent publicity gained by our present mayor, Lou Barletta, and his anti-illegal-immigrant tactics. Hazleton is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania, practically bordering the part of the Keystone State described by James Carville as Alabama in between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Not surprisingly, this city has more than its fair share of people who are the worst people ever to be even involved in politics- people who watch Fox News, listen to right-wing talk radio... we all know the stereotypes and the smears they believed in and spread around, I don't need to repeat them here.

To say that what happened tonight, after eight years of the worst presidency in American history and what seemed like an unbroken stream of blather from people disconnected from reality, is a great relief for this country is a total understatement. I told anyone who asked me that I felt that Barack Obama represented the much-needed reset button that this country needed.

A sweeter moral victory was seeing Hazleton's mayor, Lou Barletta, lose for the second time to incumbent congressman Paul Kanjorski. Last year, Barletta began his second attempt at a congressional run a mere month after he was sworn in for his third term as mayor, and it was widely believed that, thanks to the national press attention he achieved over the past two years with his anti-illegal-immigration stance, that he would defeat Kanjorski. Thankfully, it was not to be. I was prepared to accept a Congressman Barletta with the knowledge that he would have to be part of a minority. Now Pennsylvania doesn't have to.

In all my years as a voter, I never saw lines like I did when I went to vote tonight. They were not as bad as the three-to-five-hour lines reported elsewhere in the country (more like close to an hour at my particular district). I never saw people as enthusiastic as they were tonight.

In short, we can all breathe easy. The first task, Americans taking back America, has been achieved. Now we can take a short break before the real work - rebuilding the country as it should have been like in the past eight years - begins.

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