I was a young girl in India looking from afar in awe when the civil rights movement in the US was under way. Today as a middle aged woman and an American citizen, I am equally thrilled to be a participant in the logical grand finale to those distant events of forty years ago. There was a certain inevitability to Barack Obama’s historic win. I am glad it has happened in my lifetime and my children’s.
Obama is the winner in an American presidential election. But this was also a world election. No matter what happens internally in the US regarding the economy, jobs and the "war on terror," with the election of Obama to the highest national office, we have cleared a stubborn cultural hurdle that desperately needed to get out of our way. The whole world was watching. Beginning this morning, US prestige world wide will begin to be restored after being in the dumpster for eight long miserable years of ignorance, ineptitude, aggression, corruption and divisiveness.
I am a bit woozy after a late evening spent with like minded friends when some good red wine and champagne flowed freely. I will end with my congratulations to the disciplined Obama campaign staff, tireless volunteers, donors, bloggers and voters who did their bit to bring about this much needed change in the country’s mood and aspirations. Also, best wishes and the best of luck to Senator Obama and Senator Biden for their upcoming tenure at the helm of the nation’s tilting ship…. Peace!
Accidental Blogger 
11 responses to “Yobama!”
Congratulations Americans for doing the right thing.It is indeed a milestone and we look forward to a better world.And Congratulations AB, Ruchira, and all its contributers for hanging in there through the dark and grim times when things didnt look good. Peace and goodwill to all for a
truly festive season.
Jatinder
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Oh, God! Will AB now have to morph into the The Happy Times Courier-Express? Somehow I think not…
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I was going to come up with a separate comment, but got tired out after all the rejoicing at night, so will just link to my personal reflections on this momentous day. I went to bed with a day long migraine shortly after PA was called for Obama, and woke up at midnight to find that Obama was #44, in time to hear his victory speech in Grant Park. What a wondrous moment!
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Having watched early television reports (that tedious News Hour program is still on?) of results in a pub last night over pizza and beer, followed by radio coverage (Pacifica versus local commercial “news” radio) at home up to and including the President-elect’s speech, I am most encouraged by the outcome when I think of my 2 1/2 year old son. For him this signals new possibilities which might evolve over his lifetime into a genuinely promising trend of freedom tastefully dispensed. Me? I have a more tainted view, best expressed by Robert Link’s comment on Balkinization. The post to which it responds is also carefully measured, although I don’t see exactly how trusting one’s gut is exclusive of rational consideration.
So much for the Happy Times Courier Express, eh?
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Nora Ephron has the hyperventilating mommy act down perfectly!
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I don’t want to be a killjoy, and I was definitely happy when they called it for President-Elect Obama (!!!), but at the same time, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the thoughts behind this post:
As of last night, Barack Obama has now become for the first time in American history the very first African-American to be elected Jesus. Now everything will be better forever HOORAAAAAAY! Except if you’re gay.
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For a person who started his professional life researching the sad history of the blacks in the US, the victory of Barack Obama was heartening and remarkable. Its been a long, hard road for the community in the US and Obama, though not a descendant of slaves, has captured their imagination.His victory speech has only been outdone by the earlier one on race in the wake of the Rev Wright controversy.Indeed, in my view his repudiation of Wright has gone a long way in convincing blacks that he represents them, rather than the other way around. The voting outcome, if early polls are to be believed, is that 96 per cent of the blacks voted for him, 66 per cent Hispanics, women, the young and so on. The only significant community that did not were the white males.
Be that as it may, for me as an Indian it was important to see how my country and its people are affected by the outcome. As you know, George W Bush has enjoyed great support in India, in great measure because of the Indo-US nuclear deal which Senator Obama initially opposed. But as I have argued in a leader article written for my paper Mail Today,(posted in my blog mjoshi.blogspot.com) yesterday’s verities may no longer matter.
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It was indeed a wonderful feeling to hear the victory speech of Obama. Having just finished reading his book Dreams from My Father, I felt I was able to connect much of what he said to his own experience. Given the situation of the global economy and much else in today’s world if the voters had not chosen a Democratic Party candidate it would have been only on account of race and that would have been very sad indeed.
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Thank you everyone for weighing in on the Obama victory. We can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Since the debacle of 2000 many of us have worked on campaigns, donated money and waited fervently (some of us have also blogged furiously) just to see this hope realized.
The fact that we will now have a calm and unflappable president who is capable of a cerebral approach to complex issues, even if he is reluctant to rock the corporate board too energetically, is for me the most salutory outcome of Tuesday’s election.
We are indeed fortunate to have dodged the McCain-Palin bullet. It is reassuring that our president won’t see war as a solution to world problems and intellectual curiosity as an undesirable attribute. Reeling as we are from the damage done by the ignorant and dangerous administration of Bush-Cheny, electing McCain-Palin would have further compounded the injury. Electing an erratic, impulsive and technologically challenged older man for president and an utterly ignorant woman who apparently did not know that Africa is a continent, as the vice president may have amounted to a body blow from which we may not have recovered for a long time. Had McCain -Palin won, they could have been even more harmful to the nation’s IQ than the administration of incurious George.
I am okay with the Dems not having absolute power. Without a bit of restraint, they are sure to foul up with their hubris. Now, I will wait and see if Harry Reid will have the gumption to strip Joe Lieberman of his committee responsibilities with a swift kick in the pants, if Sarah Palin will forever disappear into an Alaska snow storm and if Joe the Plumber at last decides to enroll in a plumbing school to get certified.
Joe:
Barack Obama is not Jesus – he himself <a href=:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5YJkhizRs&feature=related“>assured us of that fact :-)
As for gays, it is true that for this section of the population, unfortunately it is still a long hard road. (See my comment on Andrew’s recent post) I don’t know that any elected leader is going to be able to solve the problem of discrimination against gays by just winning elective office. The change will come through a paradigm shift and via well crafted legal actions. The younger generation, just as they have proved to be less hung up on race than their parents, will also pave the path for equality for the gay community.
Do note however, that in his victory speech in Chicago, Obama said the following:
It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
That a US president-elect publicly acknowledged gay Americans as part of his political constituency in his speech to the entire nation, is progress of sorts.
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I’d certainly agree that even a President who wasn’t bad on gay rights wouldn’t be able to solve the problem by him- or herself just by winning the election. But at the same time, Obama is, to my mind, clearly bad on the gay rights issue. It’s not even just that he doesn’t support federal law requiring recognition of same-sex marriage, but that he’s made repeated statements to the effect of, “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.” That legitimizes the anti-gay definitional argument, and it was not necessary for him to do that in order to stake out a centrist position. The fact that he acknowledged that gay people are part of this country (the same as disabled persons, i.e., no more part of his constituency than “Republican[s]”!) in his speech doesn’t even remotely look like progress, in my opinion.
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Joe:
The “progress” refers not to the plight of the gay community but to improved presidential rhetoric.
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