Four years ago tonight, this was the scene on my street. I doubt there will be anything of the sort tonight- no organic 3am congregation, no dance parties, no pot-and-pan drum circles, no bouncing, no unfettered joy. No feeling that we've reached some sort of turning point, achieved a milestone, made a start on a path toward a new way of doing things. And in this case, that might be okay. I don't think it's ever a good thing to think of a politician as anything other than a man, a flawed human like any of us, and tightly constrained by a system that has entrenched centuries of vested interests and patterns of political behavior. There is a reason hope is considered by some to be audacious- all too often, it is mired in, made a travesty by, reality.
That said, it will be with a sigh of relief if I wake up tomorrow, check the final ("final") returns, and see an Obama victory. There is always a lesser of two evils.
Historically, second term presidents have been more free to follow their own desires. Obama has big issues that must be addressed. But the nation is poisoned: People go around saying absolutely crazy shit but they do not seem to be able to access why they are crazy - their context is dogma, not history, science or even common sense - and these people are considered "middle of the road" by half the country! Still, there are plenty of hard-working, generally-moral Americans and our now-dead parents left us plenty of infrastructure. I guess we'll muddle through.
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