Ahira's Hangar

For fourteen hours straight I did everything: was appointed judge, set up the machines and booths, entered ballots, guided people to the correct precincts (we had three), walked campaigners 100 feet away, troubleshot, subbed when people took breaks, broke everything down in record speed, checked the precinct judge on two occasions. My coworkers thought I was amazing. What I got paid, praise, it didn't matter as long as something like this happened in my lifetime, and more importantly for the world we leave our kids. This was the first time since Carter's failed election run I ever put a bumper sticker on my car. The first time ever contributed to a campaign (other than working for many) and the first time I've networked with people across the city on a personal basis.

Two major highlights were seeing a young college kid in a Christopher Walken t-shirt drag his girlfriend straight from bed to the polls, some one said hey I love your shirt, I said "More cowbell!" and everyone burst out laughing-then at 5pm he was there again having succeeded in hauling his burnt out brother out of bed to vote. And the second was seeing my state rep, a beautiful, boisterous black woman, get out of her car, on her lunch break, looking to the heavens in glee, singing at the top of her voice, "It's his-tory in the making!".

I just watched The Hour, a hip talk show on CBC for the "young crowd." One of the guests was Scott McClelland, the former White House spokesman who had quit over the deceptions occurring within the Bush administration. Anyway, on the show, McClelland was saying how, when he found out what was going on behind his back, he had become so disillusioned that he could not continue his job of speaking for the White House. He said he wrote his memoirs, What Happened, as a way to try and understand for himself what went wrong in the Bush presidency. McClelland had genuinely believed in George W. Bush - and so he wondered what had happened to turn a governor of Texas, who had (apparently) worked well with Democrats, into such a polarizing figure as President. McClelland was enthusiastic about Obama's win, but he also expressed sober concern about how Obama will handle Washington politics and if he might be swallowed up by it as GWB was.

And yes, he said pretty much the same as you are saying, duchess -- that Obama will have to find a way to govern from the center and not go too far left.

Let's hope Obama's vision and ideals don't get trampled under the mud in Washington.