There was a very brief moment last night when I thought McCain might have won. It was quarter til eleven and as I was passing a bar a group of young white girls emerged hollering, "Nobama, Nobama" and doing victory dances. There was more cheering and "Nobama" chanting coming from inside the bar and people were slapping each other on the back, shouting epithets at Obama and exclaiming "We did it!"
Could they have stolen another one? It would have to have been massive theft, blatant, all the way across a huge country. And for a moment - just a moment - my stomach did a curl and dove into my toes.
McCain. President. Four more years of corruption, torture, oil wars, a crashing economy that he would do his best to crash even further. It was an appalling thought.
But what really got to me was what a McCain victory would have said about us: that after enduring the Bush years, GOP lies and crackpot mythology, Constitution-shredding, and then the dirtiest presidential campaign on record, we had voted that we liked all that and wanted more. It was a depressing thought. What had happened to us during the Bush years would have had to go a lot deeper than fear, deeper than racism even. It would have meant that a majority of us were attracted/convinced by slimy campaign tactics to violate our own interests even though we knew this time that we were doing so. It was so depressing to contemplate the state of hatred and greed that we must have stooped to that I considered - for a few seconds - jumping off a bridge or, alternatively, moving to Canada. And I hate being cold.
Fifteen minutes later as I passed by one of the biggest dorms on the SCAD campus, the screaming and yelling of hundreds of kids exploded around me and students began swarming out of their rooms waving and jumping up and down. This couldn't be for McCain, surely. An arts college?
It wasn't. I stopped a girl who was leaving the grounds to call her parents and asked her who won. She gave me a small smile and said "Obama", then hurried off. This morning I found out that the Atlanta station had declared McCain the winner in Georgia shortly after 10.30, which is what the girls were crowing about.
Needless to say, I was relieved. We gave a pass to our prejudice and finally threw out the bums who have been merrily picking our pockets - and bank accounts and inheritances and even piggybanks - and telling us that was the way for us to get rich. You'd think after a couple of centuries of the "Give me all your money and I'll make you rich" scam, we wouldn't be as vulnerable as we proved to be.
Maybe this is the end of that.
The screaming at the dorms went on for well over an hour. The 'hood, which surrounds the campus on all sides, was very, very quiet.
In Other Election News:
Georgia Blue Dogs Barrow and Kingston were handily re-elected. Sen Saxby Chambliss, whose election was stolen for him by the RNC 6 years ago, has probably won his first honest (hopefully) campaign but not by much. As I write, he is leading but by less than a percentge point with 1+% of the precincts yet to report. It's going to be squeaker.
Jeanne Shaheen, one of the best Govs my native New Hampshire ever had, has defeated BushBaby John Sununu. Yay! Another Red slimeball bites the dust.
Pennsylvania, after all the effort put into it by John McCain and some of the biggest media buys the RNC coughed up for, went for Obama. I haven't seen the numbers but I don't think it was even all that close. Thanks to eRobin and all her activist cohorts for holding the line.
Get some sleep, Rob. You've earned it.
McCain did finally win his home state of Arizona, but by less than he won in Arkansas.
More to follow, I suppose.
The first black president in US history. What a difference a day makes....
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