So my hours of work as a precinct captain and my donations and my phone calls and so on (as well as the work of thousands of others like me) have paid off and we are now on the path of change. For two years I've expected this to happen and I had hoped to celebrate with friends and cry joyous tears. None of that happened as Texas is still red as red can be and it still stands true that Republicans are people and people can be cruel. I did cry last night but not happy tears. Anyway, I am excited about the direction our country will go now and I hope that by January, this hate and venom will die off and we will begin to work together to rebuild our great country. This comment from a CNN article sums it up better than I can.
I want to point out one thing:
Barack Obama has declared that there is not Red America, or a Blue America, but rather a United States of America. Last night he spoke to the supporters of John McCain, saying, "I need you help", and that "I will be your President too". Now, if you're a conservative, you can choose to be cynical and believe that this is nothing more than political rhetoric- but you'd better hope that it's not, because if it is, then we're all screwed for another four years. You can also be selfish- we can all be selfish, we can all cling to our sense of exclusive identity and go on hating each other until the entire country falls down around our ears. You can laugh at Obama's calls for unity because you're a small-town pro-lifer who thinks that he's godless and arrogant, and continue to hate all the "blue states", and I can respond by continuing to hate the "red states" and thinking of you as nothing more than a fat, lazy ignorant person. We can literally do this until the country dies. And it would be the dumbest, most selfish thing to do ever.
We have issues in this country, and this is the time to focus on them. Barack Obama is not a Muslim (though it wouldn't matter is he was), he is not a terrorist, he is not a communist. I like him because he transcends the Cold War- he's said the things that nobody else has had the courage to say because we like to break things into "Communist" and "Democratic"- a totally false and outdated distinction. Obama believes that government should find where it can do the most good to help its citizens and the world, do what it can there, and back off where it's less effective. In that sense he's very pragmatic- and pragmatism is what we need. We need a realistic solution to Iraq, a realistic solution to the energy crisis, a realistic solution to health care and global warming and a realistic way to improve education across the board. We need to work together to do it. So please, everybody, the Republicans are not Nazis and the Democrats are not communists- it's incredibly obvious if you just take 3 minutes to use your brain instead of just making up hateful things about people who aren't just like you.
Thank you sooo much to my Republican friends who took the high road and called or emailed or texted to offer your congratulations last night. I love you. You give me faith that we can get on the same page or at least in the same chapter of the book and write a nice ending to the story of our generation.