Yes We Did

At 14th and V Streets NW, in my hood in Washington, DC, a raucous of celebration has ensued.

Yes We Did.


At 14th & U St NW


Folks climbed up on the roof of the bus stop and started dancing


It's hard to see, but the dude on the left is wearing a Hebrew skullcap, and he was dancing with the brown-skinned, Latino guy on the right


Also hard to see, but a drum/conga line in front of the tent


Bananas for Obama?


In front of Busboys and Poets

I have to admit that I haven't been excited by the election for the last few months. Maybe my faith that Obama would win was so strong I felt no need to follow day-to-day news; or maybe I've read so much news that apathy has set in as I've become yet again bewildered by all the nuances of all the issues facing us.

Obama wins North Carolina!

As Brian Williams has been stating all night, tonights winner faces an un-enviable, daunting task of two wars and a giant, stinking, global economic mess, plus health care, social security, huge national debt, rising and competing powers in China and Russia... and the list goes on.

But I guess that's why Barack Hussein Obama will be President, and I will not.

Still, I can't help but feel that us Obama supporters are a little too hopeful, a little too naive - that we are heaping far too many expectations on this man. How much can Obama really affect change in this country over the next four years? Will he really bring our troops home, fix health care and shore up our economy? Or will his failure to live up to our perhaps unreasonable expectations make us just as disillusioned with politics as many of us were before the name Obama became a synonym for change?

What may be more important than achievements, though, is Obama's potential to not polarize folks the way Clinton and W. Bush did, and even more importantly, to get more Americans involved in politics again. The way Obama won this election is a testament to the importance of grass-roots organization, of the average man and woman feeling that they are empowered enough to have their voices heard on even the national stage, so much so that they are willing to wait 6 hours in line just to cast one vote that by itself will not tip an election either way, to post in their Facebooks and MySpaces and Xanga blogs the new facts they've learned, the latest biased slants from Fox News, or the latest Youtube exposé. This mastery of ground-up support is proof of Obama's shrewdness, his intelligence, his ability to run a campaign. Beyond that, I can only hope that it indicates more, not just smarts, not just the siezing of opportunity, but a real change - politics as our grade school teachers tell us ought to be; politics of, by, and for the people.