About Last Night
I have a lot of things I want to say about the last 24 hours, and it will come trickling out slowly because of events on the ground here.
Last night was pretty incredible. I have always taken American racism as an article of faith, but to see Obama win like that was just incredible. I came home with a blissful sort of pride that lasted all the way until I woke up and saw that Prop 8 was passing in my former home state. I thought California was better than that.
I spent the hours between 1-8 watching polls in the Southern part of town. My assigned poll was poorly laid out and the heat was up too high. But the poll workers and their commitment to getting everything right was fairly inspiring. This was a 97-percent Democratic ward, the sort of place I thought Obama needed to run up unusually large margins. The demographic assumption would be that the poll workers were Democrats. Perhaps in huge city politics, it would be the sort of place rife with corruption. But what I witnessed was a group of people absolutely committed to making sure the rules were followed. That's about all I'll say. We also saw excellent turnout, 500 people showed up a station that usually sees about 300 in a normal election.
Then we hit two parties, one where we watched the call and another where we watched the speeches. I can't believe this happened. President Obama. It's stunning, really.
Last night was pretty incredible. I have always taken American racism as an article of faith, but to see Obama win like that was just incredible. I came home with a blissful sort of pride that lasted all the way until I woke up and saw that Prop 8 was passing in my former home state. I thought California was better than that.
I spent the hours between 1-8 watching polls in the Southern part of town. My assigned poll was poorly laid out and the heat was up too high. But the poll workers and their commitment to getting everything right was fairly inspiring. This was a 97-percent Democratic ward, the sort of place I thought Obama needed to run up unusually large margins. The demographic assumption would be that the poll workers were Democrats. Perhaps in huge city politics, it would be the sort of place rife with corruption. But what I witnessed was a group of people absolutely committed to making sure the rules were followed. That's about all I'll say. We also saw excellent turnout, 500 people showed up a station that usually sees about 300 in a normal election.
Then we hit two parties, one where we watched the call and another where we watched the speeches. I can't believe this happened. President Obama. It's stunning, really.
1 Comment(s):
- Posted by
at November 06, 2008 6:25 AM |
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Coming home from the upper west side at 1 am on the 2...
Black woman gets on at 66th street wearing O cap and carrying balloons, on the way to Times Square. She's TWU (the union headquarters is near there, must have been a party there).
She shouts Obama, the whole car cheers. She shouts "Change is Coming!". White middle aged woman shouts "Change is already here!"
Everybody cheered again.
Well, who do you expect on the train at 1 am election night?
