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So, we're headed into the home stretch.
For me, as I imagine for a lot of us here, everything that's happening now is tinged with our memories of the pain of 2004. And 2000, of course; but the thing with 2000 is that a lot of us didn't quite understand how awful that situation was until *after* we'd been through it. By 2004, it was crystal clear--to 51% of the voting populace, anyhow--that the outcome of that election was a big sign reading This Country Is In Crisis And It's Not Coming Out Any Time Soon. For many reasons, then, it's hard for a lot of us to trust anything good that happens for our side. Yeah, we're winning in the polls. But if we can't trust the actual voting process--and we know, we don't just suspect, we KNOW that the Republican strategy involves voter suppression--then all the work that's been done could still lead us to a loss (or at any rate an apparent loss) on Tuesday.
I choose to believe that it will not. I believe it for a few reasons, one being that in 2006 it became clear that whatever manipulations these jackasses engage in, they cannot always achieve the results they intend. Another is that to me, this *feels* totally different from 2004. I've been trying to explain this to people who don't live here, and I guess my summary is this: In 2004, we had a candidate who, good and decent as I believe him to be, had not learned how to become a star. In 2008, we have a candidate who was apparently born to this. The intangibles are finally on our side. That, and the media--who, yes, respond to money and power and whatnot, but what I don't think we have really grasped and accepted yet is that the 'serious' news media has essentially been assimilated by the 'celebrity' news structure. Even news with real content has to be distributed and consumed based on the principles that govern 'stories' about Paris Hilton's driving and Britney Spears's weight. And if I mention those two names in this context, it's because I'm thinking about that McCain "celebrity" ad. It was a ridiculous ad; but perhaps because it was incompetent and sleazy it revealed the very thing that it was attempting to deny: that Obama is, in fact, a celebrity--and that this is why the media love him. Being a celebrity does not HAVE to be a terrible thing, though in our culture it often is. You can become a celebrity for virtually any reason in this country (vide Joe the Plumber). But what celebrities have in common is this: they have something in them that people want to watch. Now, often that something is the capacity for self-destruction, and that's why celebrity culture can get as ugly as it does. But sometimes, it's something better than that. And I think that what people want to watch in Obama is his confidence not just in himself or in his own campaign, but in the possibility that things are changing, can change, and will get better.
Of course we all watch for different manifestations of that. As I think over all this now as we approach the day of reckoning, I find myself thinking mainly about PJ and her world. Her world includes the world of paid child care, and in our neighborhood, that world includes a lot of African-American women. PJ's nanny is one of them. I don't talk about her much because the fact that someone works for you doesn't mean you have the right to blather about them online. But a lot of how I feel about this election has to do with watching her go through, for the first time, the hope/anxiety/fear/dread/excitement/hope/fear/hope emotional ride of a presidential election in which she is deeply invested. We're giving her some time off Tuesday morning so she can go vote. She's planning to take her entire family. All of them, as I understand it, are voting for the first time.
So here's what I hope for now: that when Obama wins, as I believe he will, all the people who voted for the first time, who are invested in American national politics for the first time, who are just getting to grips with this idea that elections are and can be about them and what they hope and believe, do NOT have to go through the same process of disillusionment that I've been through. I hope that all the promise that Obama seems to represent, for them and for me, turns out to be real, and that there will in fact be real change.
It's too late to keep me from becoming a hardbitten cynic who cannot really believe in any politician that still draws breath. But it's not too late for these voters. So please, Obama, if you're listening: Do them right. Don't fuck around, either relative to your marriage or relative to your constituents. Don't get so enamored of bipartisanism and bringing the country together that you lose sight of your own goals. Don't make cosmetic adjustments and call it change. Do something real for them. Give them the faith in the possibilities of democracy that they never had until now, and which I once had and have, I believe, irretrievably lost. Now that you have people hoping, give them something they can use to feed it and nurture it and keep it alive. Come through. For them. Make that word you ran on mean something.
PJ is starting to talk a lot more now. She has learned the word "boo" for Halloween and enjoys saying it. She is too young to know what's going on and she won't remember that she lived through this election. So if all this goes down the way it should, she will never remember a time when all Presidents were white.
I mean think about that. Do you grasp it? I fear I do not. But I try. If what should happen happens, then we are moving out of one world and into another right now. And what I hope is that we keep on moving.
Good luck everyone,
The Plaid Adder
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