Sunday, November 02, 2008

Can You Hear It Coming?

The rumblings...when the first rocks have come loose, knocking into other, larger boulders, which in turn undermine the structure of the entire mountainside...

Even self-identified rednecks are out there working for Obama. Republicans are scrambling to save their Senate and Congressional seats that are looking to be swept away with all that earth looking like it's going to be rollin' down that mountain. Profoundly moving stories like this from a 55-year-old Caucasian banker are happening everywhere:

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"

"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.

Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.

We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.

You can guess who did.

From rumblings to, one hopes, humblings. With Joe the Extremist questioning Obama's patriotism and American values this weekend and a GOP group reprising Rev. Wright on an ad that ran during Sunday Night Football, with Elizabeth Dole trying to save her Senate seat by smearing her opponent as godless via dubbed lines, with Sarah Palin creating the creepiest cognitive dissonance in memory by running as both celebrity and hate-monger, one can only wish that an Obama landslide will put the politics of lies and smears to bed for at a generation, and maybe force the more introspective of GOP losers to make a humble reappraisal of their electoral actions.

When you watch a video like the one below, you see how much Obama has gifted all of us Americans with his inclusionary campaign. Phone bankers are reporting older, more rural folks using some old-fashioned racial epithets when declaring their support for Obama. One senses that while not necessarily approving such language, Obama would understand that they are from a different time, but a vote is a vote, and recognizing the need for change is all any voter needs right now:



This is it. As Obama said early in the Primaries, we are the ones we've been waiting for. With over 27,000,000 early and absentee ballots cast so far, this is an election already underway in a very, very big way. While I would never rule out an upset, I believe we're about to watch a mountain roll. And hopefully it will extend to other historic changes, like a decisive "NO" vote on California's noxious and discriminatory Proposition 8, designed to overturn legal gay marriage in this great state.

I'm sure I'm not alone in betting that the vote on Prop 8 will be tighter than that for President, but there is reason for hope, like the Republican Mayor of San Diego reversing himself on the issue in an emotional public statement, in which he mentions both his gay staff members and his gay daughter:



I emailed my support to jerrysanders@sandiego.gov. How nice to see statesmanship come in different colors.

C'mon, America.

1 comment:

Devoted Reader in Delmar said...

Wonderful blogs this last week before the BIG DAY - brought tears to my eyes.
DRinDelmar