Dancing In The Streets

Tuesday night on Seattle's Capitol Hill, s crowd of around 3,000 gathered for an impromptu celebration. I've never seen anything like the worldwide outpouring of goodwill over the election of a politician. It's remarkable. It makes me proud. Watch as the revelers break into a spontaneous rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner":

As hard as it may be to sing, I've always liked that old song and I've always thought we had a great flag. What I've never liked -- what I've resented -- is the hijacking by the right of our national symbols. They've equated the flag with a cramped, nativist patriotism and support of their own agenda, and flatly accused Americans who differed with them of being unpatriotic and of hating the country. In this video, 3000 Seattleites not only take back the flag and the song, they offer it up to everyone...

There is a lot of hard work ahead and the country has serious problems. (Joe Biden told the attendees of a Seattle fundraiser that Bush and Cheney were leaving behind "a hell of a mess.") Our finances are a wreck. Our infrastructure continues to crumble. The gap between rich and poor is the greatest it has ever been. We have not transitioned out of a manufacturing economy in any way that benefits working people and allows them to live with security and dignity. Fifty million Americans lack health insurance, tens of millions more lack adequate insurance. We started an awful war that has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions more, and cost billions of dollars. The Bush Administration has put the Constitution at risk through its penchant for secrecy, by exploiting 9/11 to increase the power of the executive branch, and by its contempt for fundamental civil liberties. But in the past, history has blessed us with the exact right leader at the country's most desperate turns. Barack Obama has the ability, the temperament, and the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. He represents the change we can believe in, the change we desperately need...

Meanwhile, the blame game in Nutsoland begins. Here's a proscription list, sort of like in ancient Rome minus the competence. "Criticize Obama, you’re a racist. Criticize Romney and you’re a bigot. Well, then put me in the racist bigot category, because I can’t stand a Racists, Marxist, anti-semite like Obama and I can’t stand a lying flaming liberal pro homosexual agenda, pro socialized medicine, pro gun control, anti-Reagan back stabbing loser like Romney." Hey, if the shoe fits...

Henry Louis Gates writes movingly of the end of the last color line, and compares Obama's election to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation: 

On that first transformative day, when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Frederick Douglass, the greatest black orator in our history before Martin Luther King Jr., said that the day was not a day for speeches and "scarcely a day for prose." Rather, he noted, "it is a day for poetry and song, a new song."

It hasn't escaped Stupid and Contagious' notice that Obama is black again. (He thinks that's a good thing.)...

Foxessa blogs about voting in a precinct near Ground Zero: 

Our part of the city is one of the places to which freedmen and women flowed during and post the Civil War, to work in the textile factories and sweat shops that were here. We’re also only blocks east of the old wharfs (which were very busy in those days), and the warehouses serviced by the railroads. Many New York state's people of color had already been working over there. The oldest continuing operating business/building in the city is there, now called the Ear Inn, but was the James Brown House, that serviced the black labor force employed on the docks and the railroads, and provided rooms too. The building we live in was thrown up originally to provide housing for this influx up from the South. All this felt very close to us today.

Yes We Did!

I'm 53 years old and haven't felt this way -- meaning hopeful and great -- about the new president in my entire life. 

Despite the best early efforts of the talking heads -- even Rachel Maddow! -- to make up a story line that the first ten or so states indicated a long night because none of them had flipped, there was a key sign that 2008 was much different than 2004. Wisconsin, the Badger State, was a nail-biter in 2004, with John Kerry revailing by a hair. Last night, the networks called it almost immediately for Barack Obama.

We sent up the first cheer when Pennsylvania broke our way. McCain had gone all in in the Keystone State, and it was hard to see how he could win without it unless he ran the table of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. When NBC called Ohio for Obama, the champagne began to flow. When his electoral count passed 200 before the West Coast polls closed, we knew it was over: Anyone who lives out here knew that Washington, Oregon, and California (73 EV) were mortal locks. What we didn't expect were all three states being called the second polls closed at 8:00 Pacific time.

Hugs and cheers! Now it was time for the Veuve Cliquot! And we -- friends, neighbors, and family -- drank deeply and with great satisfaction...

Hubert Locke, great-grandson of slaves and University of Washington professor emeritus, writes movingly of the impact of Obama's victory in the form of a letter to his dead parents:

You would be particularly proud, Papa, of the fact that President Obama stands in the grand tradition and will take up the mantle of other cherished men of color -- Gandhi, Mandela, King -- who have shown the world what great leadership truly is. It is, I think, one of the surprises of history -- that hardship and oppression can produce leaders of enormous vision and immense compassion. Our new president's parents and grandparents, and the places where he was raised, all give him that wider perspective on the world in which we are so desperately in need...

E. J. Dionne says that it is time to hope again:

Above all, it is time to celebrate the country's wholehearted embrace of democracy, reflected in the intense engagement of Americans in this campaign and the outpouring to the polls all over the nation. For years, we have spoken of bringing free elections to the rest of the world even as we cynically mocked our own ways of conducting politics. Yesterday, we chose to practice what we have been preaching...

Don't miss David Horsey's wonderful drawing here...

The New York Times and Washington Post have good campaign overviews here and here. It's irrelevant now, but the papers offer curiously differing accounts of the Obama camp's response to addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket. According to the Times the campaign was caught flat-footed, while the Post says that from the beginning it looked at the choice as an unexpected gift. Both agree that the contest against Hillary Clinton created a juggernaut and that Obama's calm response to the financial crisis was the turning point of the general election...

I don't know who this beautiful little girl is, but she pretty much speaks for me and millions more. The river is waiting, come rise up...

Election Updates

9:19 p.m.: Just a a brilliant victory speech from Barack Obama. Confident and humble, respectful to his opponent, reaching out to those who voted against him, mindful of the challenges ahead but calm nonetheless. I got teary and I'm not the only one here who did.

8:49 p.m.: Email from Barack Obama:

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. 

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack

8:23 p.m. John McCain is giving an exceptionally gracious concession speech. He recognized the historic importance of this election to African-Americans and the importance of Obama's ability to bring millions of new voters into the democratic process. This John McCain would have been a much more formidable opponent.

8:02 p.m. NBC calls the West Coast for Obama!!!!!!!! I'm near tears! Our long national nightmare is OVER!!!!!!!!!

7:48 p.m. Pacific: This is so great. Also, I nominate William Bennett as the biggest blowhard on television.

7:21 p.m. Pacific: CNN calls Florida, N. Carolina, and Colorado for Obama! (Texas for McCain.)

7:12 p.m. Pacific: Damn. McCain pulled off major upsets in Utah and Mississippi. That sure puts a damper on my evening.

6:55 p.m. Pacific: The vibe in the K./T. house is great! Now, we just want to run up the score!

Obama has 207 electoral votes. California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii (70 votes) are mortal locks. Colorado, Virginia, Florida, and N. Carolina (64 votes) all look very possible. And Indiana and Missouri are still up for grabs, but they'll be tough.

6:24 p.m. Pacific: Fox and NBC have both called Ohio for Obama! This is over!

5:38 p.m. Pacific: Georgia to McCain. No upset there.

5:31 p.m. Pacific: Kay Hagan defeats Dole in North Carolina! +3!

With Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the fold, Obama needs win only one red state and he's the next president. So watch Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina of the states where polls have closed.

5:18 p.m. Pacific: NBC calls New Hampshire senate race for Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. +2!

My son just called to tell me that CNN's Ohio reporter left the McCain "victory" party there because no one had shown up. The Obama party is quite well attended.

Around these parts, young people have been really excited about voting. It's been great to see.

5:02 p.m. Pacific: Pennsylvania! McCain had to have it. Put the champagne on ice!

4:30 p.m. Pacific: For what they're worth, here are some exit poll numbers from this morning (Obama first):

Fl 52-44
Ga 47-51
Mi 60-39
Mh 57-43
Mn 60-39
Pa 57-42
Va 55-45
Wi 58 42
Oh 54-45
Nc 52-48
In 52-48
Mo 52-48
Nv 55-45
Nm 56-43
Ia 58-42
Wv 44-55

Nate Silver outlines the drawbacks to exit polls here.

4:00 p.m.: NBC calls Kentucky for McCain, Vermont for Obama. McCain leads Obama in Indiana by 38 votes with 10% of the vote in. Polls also close in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina. Next poll closings are North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia at 4:30 Pacific.

African-American early voting turnout in Georgia was 35%. If total AA turnout in Georgia is 30% or more, Obama has an excellent chance of carrying the state.

NBC calls a Democratic senate seat pickup in Virginia (Mark Warner).

12:20 p.m. Pacific Time: FiveThirtyEight.com projects that Barack Obama will carry 25 states totaling 353 electoral votes, 83 more than needed to be elected president. They also project that Obama will win 52.3% of the popular vote to John McCain's 46.2%. "Our model projects that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana."

Barack Obama's Greatest Hits!

"Yes We Can," Will.i.am.

"Respondele A Obama"

"A Change Is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke

"O-B-A-M-A (Obamagroove)," Zigaboo Modeliste

"A True Friend Of The People," Ralph Stanley

"Here Comes The Sun," Richie Havens

"Oui, En Peut (Yes, We Can)" (Obama Zydeco)

"I Want Barack," Jay Jay French & Friends

"American Prayer," Dave Stewart

"We Are The Ones," Will.i.am.

"There's No One As Irish As Barack Obama," Hardy Drew & The Nancy Boys

Come On Up For The Rising!

This is driving me nuts! Will the American people do the right thing, the necessary thing, and elect Barack Obama president tomorrow? Or will we shrink from our responsibility and vote in an aging war hero with no real grasp of the problems facing the country, much less what to do about them. All signs point to the former, but as a Red Sox fan and a Democrat, I won't be convinced until Obama takes the oath of office. And even then...

The Monday before the elections of 2000 and 2004 found me pessimistic. In 2000, I figured the election would come down to Florida and Ohio, and didn't like our chances in either. That night, when one of the networks actually called Florida for Al Gore, I began channel surfing to see if any of the others had. One of my kids asked me what I thought; I told him that if Gore had won Florida, I didn't see how he could lose. But I also told him that I didn't believe Florida yet. In the event, of course, Gore did win Florida only to be cheated out of it. A little remembered postscript from the 2000 election is that had Gore won New Hampshire, he would have survived the loss of Florida. I mention the Granite State result in particular because Bill Clinton won it twice and because Nader proved to be the difference there. Gore also lost Arkansas -- and I'll always think Clinton could have made a difference there had Gore asked him to intervene -- and his home state of Tennessee.

I never felt good about 2004, despite Bush's unpopularity and the failures in Iraq. John Kerry ran an uninspired campaign and never offered a viable alternative to Bush's conduct of the war. Kerry would not commit to ending it, instead flourishing a fig leaf about "getting the allies involved." He never explained why the allies would want to get involved in a mess that they had opposed since the beginning. I also wrote off Florida; it was obvious that Jeb Bush wasn't about to let his brother lose there. Kerry never seriously contested the Sunshine State anyway. Instead, he bet his chips on Ohio, which at the time was owned and operated by the Republican party. We know how that went.

But Barack Obama has run a completely different campaign. He's eschewed the 50% + 1 strategy that plays into Republican hands. He's organized a formidable ground game based on the assumption that it can attract enough new and first-time voters to put a number of red states in play. There's a risk inherent in that, but on the other hand the potential reward is a mandate-level win. I've always wondered what would happen if the Democrats gave up their addiction to TV ads and returned to their core strength of getting out the vote. We're about to find out, and as of this moment things look pretty damn good...

In one of the few times he's ever been a warm-up act, Bruce Springsteen opened for Obama before a crowd of 80,000 in Columbus, Ohio. "So I don't know about you, but I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back," said the Boss. He went on to say that

"I have spent my life as a musician measuring the distance between the American dream and reality.

"I look around and I see people who are losing their jobs or their retirement incomes or don't have health care. The distance between that dream and reality has grown greater and more painful than ever.

"I believe Senator Obama has taken a measure of that distance in his own life and in his own work. I believe he understands in his heart the cost of that distance in blood and suffering in the lives of Americans."

Speaking of suffering Americans, don't miss a new blog called Caterpillars And Butterflies, about the daily experiences of a nurse in an inner city health clinic. From her most recent entry:

I talk to a patient on the phone and she yells at me. I tell her if she doesn't stop yelling at me I will need to hang up the phone. She says, "I'm not yelling. Believe me, you'd know if I was yelling". I tell her I think she is yelling at me and she needs to stop. She calms down, and proceeds to tell me she will be at the clinic in a few minutes and has to be seen right away. I tell her there may be a 2 hour wait because she doesn't have an appointment. She hangs the phone up on me and comes to the clinic anyway. I bring her back to a clinic room and do my assessment. Her lip is swollen and she thinks she was bitten by a spider. She spent the last two nights in an abandoned van. She's African American. She has fake two inch purple fingernails. She tells me she must be out of the clinic in 20 minutes because she needs to pick up her 8 year old son who will be waiting for her outside the YMCA. I beg one of our doctors to see her ahead of other patients because her son will think he was abandoned. They are homeless.

If you haven't yet heard Sarah Palin get punked, here's your chance. How anyone could believe that it's the President of France on the line is beyond me. Much of it is excruciating. She actually listens seriously when told that the French equivalent of Joe The Plumber is Marcel With Bread Under His Armpits...

Win or lose tomorrow, Paul Krugman thinks that the Republicans are in for an internal Reign of Terror, led by the anti-intellectual know-nothings...

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By says that we are at a turning at that we know it: "I sense something new in the zeitgeist, a seriousness and urgency among the people. After eight years of the disastrous administration of George W. Bush that has bankrupted the country, killed thousands of our young people, decimated the military, transferred billions of dollars in wealth to corporations and one percent of the populace while impoverishing the middle class and gutting the Constitution, we are at a turning point."

E. J. Dionne writes that Obama is not just a good politician, he's a great one: "By creating a new social movement, new forms of political organization, and a sense of excitement and possibility not felt in politics for three decades, he bids to become one of the country's most consequential leaders."

Foxessa writes an insightful critique of Air America from the left. Despite misgivings about its current direction, she points out that "...the rank-and-file Air America crew has worked tirelessly and enthusiastically since its inception during the darkest days of the regime that seemed to be permenently installed as the single oligarchical ruling class, as the neoCONs blithely, publicly, declared was the Goal."

Hendrik Hetrtzberg likes W.: "These characters are cartoonish, but in a good way. They're political cartoons, not Disney cartoons (though there's a touch of Chuck Jones in the antics of Cheney and Rice). he movie reminded me that I learned a lot about the politics of the 1940s from David Low and the 1950s from Herblock."

Quote of the Day: "McCain is a gifted comedian, with perfect delivery skills..." From a comment on the blog Draft Sarah Palin For Vice President. I kid you not.

R. I. P., Studs Terkel

Bruce Shapiro of The Nation remembers a great American:

When I was a student in Chicago in the late 1970s, Studs Terkel's daily radio interview programs on WFMT were my morning seminars. Even on some mornings when I was supposed to rush out the door to real, tuition-billing courses, he'd come on interviewing a renowned soprano or playing his old tapes made on the train to the March on Washington, and I was done for.

People describe Studs's genius as a listener as if it were an innate gift. But for Studs, listening was a craft, deeply studied and deliberately honed. You could learn so much from those interviews: Studs gently focusing his guests on storytelling, giving an hour's conversation dramatic shape and musical punctuation with the rising and falling timbre of his voice and even the occasional, audible lighting of a cigar, all setting a pitch of intimate trust and respect.

It wasn't hard for a college kid in Chicago to meet Studs. He was a soft touch for emceeing a protest: with Studs as ringmaster, a rally over Pinochet's Chile or a commemoration of the long-vanished Wobblies always took on a welcome quality of celebration.

For a young journalist, having some opportunities over time to watch Studs work, and see just how deep his craft ran, was a revelation. Studs developed self-deprecatory clowning to a high art--getting into pitched battles with recording equipment, for instance--as a tactic for putting anxious interview subjects at ease. Authors on his show were almost invariably impressed by how he would enter the studio with their books scored with his scrawled notations as if he were preparing a term paper. Sure, he was a careful reader, but it was also theater, conveying immediate respect to writers accustomed to clueless celebrity interviews.

One consequence: this great interviewer was himself one tough interview. Ask Studs a question and he'd respond with a yarn, a memory, a song lyric--all great stuff, but all headed where he wanted to go rather than where you intended. His direction was usually smarter and more interesting anyway. In 1995 I interviewed Studs for a special issue of The Nation on World War II. I don't remember now what I had hoped would come out of it. But Studs just wanted to talk about another radio man, CBS legend Norman Corwin, and the great broadcast Corwin mounted for VE Day. So we did, over a long lunch at a Lebanese joint off Michigan Avenue, charting 1945 through jazz and dancing and the airwaves, with a detour into back-porch folk music and immigrant neighborhood culture swamped in the all-American postwar years. And he remembered, with some shame, his own celebration at the dropping of the atom bomb.

Studs always stood for the radical idea of the long memory. After his wife, Ida, died, his loss was acute. But the bluff radio gangster was still there--and the vigilant optimist about civil rights and social progress. How could it be otherwise, for a man who was born the year Jack Johnson was denied passage on the Titanic and who lived to see an African-American from Chicago on the verge of the presidency? The last time I saw Studs I asked how he was recovering from open-heart surgery--he was the oldest bypass patient on record. "Fightin' trim!" he assured me.

Terkel's oral histories chronicled such topics as the Great Depression, World War II, working life, race relations, and aging. He won the 1985 Pulitizer Prize for The Good War, and along with writers and poets like Carl Sandburg, James Farrell, and Nelson Algren came to personify his beloved Chicago. The New York Times obit for Terkel is here...

Does Dick ("18% Approval Rating") Cheney secretly want Barack Obama to become president? Why else would he publicly endorse John McCain? Not one to miss an opportunity, Obama immediately went on the attack. The McCain campaign accused Cheney and Obama of being in cahoots on the Bush Administration energy policy and out-of-control spending. You can't make this stuff up...

In this brief reminiscence, Terkel talks about the spontaneous joy of attending an afternoon baseball game:

The Faces Of Hope

In the videos below (each less than three minutes), three generations of African-Americans discuss the meaning of the Obama candidacy. But before viewing, consider the weight on that man's shoulders. He's not simply running for president in the most important election since 1968 or even 1932: Barack Obama walks the same path as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King. Like them, he is under the kind of scrutiny that does not permit a single misstep. Like them, he asks all Americans to go beyond their prejudices and look to their best selves: He asks us to trust ourselves as much as him. And he's doing it with a grace and poise not seen in American politics since the days of John Kennedy. It's been an absolutely bravura performance by a truly impressive human being.

African-American students from a South Bronx high school:

A single mother in Nashville:



A Seattle University law professor:



The good professor would no doubt find himself nonplussed by Sarah Palin's interpretation of the First Amendment. At first listen, she seems to think that its purpose is to protect politicians from the media. The second time through, though, I wondered whether something more sinister was in play -- that possibly she is making an implicit threat to tough questioners like Katie Couric. Judge for yourself:

The future? Let's hope so. Here's how the mock election played out at one Seattle high school...

This can't be what Coach Holmgren had in mind when he decided to come back for one last season...

Well, at least his wife is a staunch Democrat! As are most of the Seahawks...

For a glossary of Palinese, take a class at Woo University...

Convicted felon Ted Stevens soldiers on. And get this:

Best to wait on those political obituaries, say his supporters, and some opponents, too. In a state that can stir up plenty of bitterness toward the federal government and has long revered Mr. Stevens for extracting billions of dollars from it on behalf of Alaska, maybe, just maybe, they say, the votes will still be there for him, polls and conventional wisdom aside.

In other words, "give us as much taxpayer money as we want and then piss off so that we can live our lives of independence and rugged individualism." What's more, they see no hypocrisy in this attitude. That there wouldn't be an Alaska or an American West were it not for the federal government is a reality they'll deny until hell freezes over or the Cubs win the World Series, whichever comes last. (My bet is in on the snow pack in Hades)...