This morning, an odyssey came to an end. Barack Hussein Obama is President-Elect of the United States. It has taken us a long time to get here.
It started on a cold February morning in Springfield, Illinois when a first-term United States Senator announced the opening of his campaign for President and offered a message of hope for America.
We were told so many reasons that he could not succeed.
We were told the Clinton machine was unbeatable.
We were told the nation wasn’t ready for an African-American president.
We were told he hadn’t been in government long enough.
We were told he couldn’t do fundraising effectively without collecting money from lobbyists.
Later on, when he started winning caucuses and primaries, we were told he couldn’t close the deal.
We were told that his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would sink him.
We were told that his casual association with William Ayers would discredit him.
We were told that the Tony Rezko trial would implicate him.
We were told that Hispanics wouldn’t vote for him.
We were told that white working-class voters wouldn’t vote for him.
We were told that Jewish voters wouldn’t vote for him.
We were told that Southerners wouldn’t vote for him.
Later on, when he won the Democratic nomination, we were told that Hillary Clinton’s female supporters wouldn’t vote for him.
We were told that John McCain’s image as a maverick would get the Independent voters away from us.
We were told that Sarah Palin would draw Clinton’s women supporters away from him.
We were told he didn’t have enough experience.
We were told he didn’t have McCain’s foreign policy expertise.
We were told he would lose Ohio and Florida and with them the
election.
But we proved them wrong.
We phone-banked, canvassed, registered new voters, ordered buttons by the hundred, talked up the Obama-Biden ticket with our friends, turned out for his rallies and blogged. Last, but not least, we welcomed Hillary Clinton’s supporters into our common cause. (Thanks, Hillary and Bill, for all your help.)
For a year and a half, our slogan was "YES, WE CAN." Today we can say, "YES, WE DID."
For me, yesterday’s election was the high point of a long personal journal.
In 1964, when I was too young to vote, I first took serious interest in a
Presidential campaign. As a ninth grader at a suburban Atlanta high school, I was derided as a n***** lover for supporting Lyndon Johnson. I was proud to support a pro-civil rights president, and I was elated when he won by a landslide. And indeed, having already passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Johnson proceeded to pass and enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But at the same time, he was betraying the American people’s trust by escalating the Vietnam War. By 1968, the nation was in an uproar as a result of his broken promises. Seizing the opportunity, Richard Nixon pioneered his "law and order" slogan and his Southern Strategy based on fear and insecurity. Nixon paved the way for the rest of them: Reagan and the two Bushes, with a brief interregnum under Bill Clinton which slowed the pace of social decay without stopping it.
I will always respect Lyndon Johnson for the good he did early in his term, but I will never forget the way his war bled this country’s finest youth in Southeast Asia, thereby plunging the nation into nearly a half-century of misgovernment.
Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver was on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s "I Have a Dream" speech. However, the murder of John F Kennedy (who would certainly have gotten us out of Vietnam) also has its forty-fifth anniversary this year on November 23. This year is also the fortieth anniversary of the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. After four decades of atrocious misgovernment, we now have another chance.
Today we celebrate. Tomorrow the real challenge begins, the task of governing in a better way.
We need to restore economic growth and preserve jobs. We need to provide health coverage for every American. We need to make a college education affordable again. We need to develop renewable energy. We need to withdraw from Iraq in orderly fashion. We need to restore the Bill of Rights.
Can we do these things?
YES WE CAN!
But we can’t take anything for granted. We need to keep intact the networks we’ve forged in the past two years, to lobby and pressure our elected officials for change. This will sometimes include leaning on Obama himself to keep his promises. It will sometimes entail disagreeing with each other on how to achieve our common goals. It won’t be easy, and it won’t all be done at once, but yes, we can. As an old Sixties kid, let me revive an old slogan.
KEEP THE FAITH, BABY.
(This diary was written on October 4 and revised on October 14, in anticipation of yesterday’s victory.)