Vindication

I'm not really sure what to think. It's been an amazing day, and yet the events of today are only beginning to sink in. I mean, I've known for a couple of weeks now that he would win. And I've felt it for almost a year. When Wolf Blitzer told me that California would go to Obama and that its electoral votes would put him over the top, everyone knew it was coming. There was no great cathartic moment right there. Barack gave a great speech. Watching him speak, it began to dawn on me. I thought of all the people I know that have been touched by this election. I thought of all the ways this election have touched me, like Raymond at the polls today in South Boston. I was standing outside the polling location, ready to exit poll people who had just voted. An elderly black man wearing his Sunday best walked up to me, shook my hand, and introduced himself as Raymond. He said that he had never voted before, but that he was here now to vote for Barack Obama, but he didn't know where to go. Unfortunately, I had to be completely non-partisan as an exit pollster so I could do nothing more than direct Raymond to a poll worker, but I still heard his story, the latest example of what Barack Obama inspired in this election. After the victory speech, I thought of Raymond, who was inspired to have his voice heard for the first time. I thought of Tyler and everyone else I know in the campaign who have almost literally given their entire lives to the cause. I thought of people like my grandfather and others like him, the unlikely democrats who were able to see the urgency a call for unity and hope and change in our politics. All of this made me think that Barack Obama really should win the election, because he's the good guy, but the good guys never win. Then I realized that he had won. Thats when I broke down. It is certainly not the first time in our history that a politics of idealism had triumphed over a politics of divisiveness, but it was certainly the first time in my memory that it had. For the first time in my life, my belief that we could be a nation of ideals was vindicated. Because this time, I wasn't in the minority. "Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change."