Extended remarks on the 2008 Presidential Election

It is trite to say that last night I witnessed history, but it is true.

I witnessed it in a crowded room at the University Center, on a giant projection screen. Throughout the night we had been sitting on needles, grabbing chairs to sit in only to leap up minutes later, the energy in the room too palpable for anyone to stay in one place for very long.

The night began with a rundown of statistics. For each new person that came into the room, they were quickly brought up to speed and appraised of what needed to happen to win - 270 electoral votes. They were told which states had already gone blue, which states were expected to go blue, and which states were still on the knife-edge.

In fact, I think I remember saying those very words to someone as they came in the room and asked, "How are we doing?"

"We're still on the knife's-edge," I said. "It's looking like we're okay. We've already topped one hundred electorates and the senate still holds a Democratic majority, but there are a lot of red states that haven't been counted yet. It could still go either way."

As the tide of blue crept westward, though, and Virginia and Florida remained too close to call while Ohio and Iowa toppled for Obama, I was starting to really feel it. And then an amazing thing happened. The news anchors began admitting that the math simply didn't add up. They began to say that, since Obama would certainly take California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, there was no way for McCain to win. That Obama would hit 270 on the power of the coastal states alone. That there was not a single Republican senator left in New England. That New Mexico had just gone blue.

The news spread like wildfire through the room. "They're saying... they're saying we have it in the bag," we said to each other. "They're saying there's no way McCain will win unless he takes California." And standing around together we shook our heads muttering that we all knew the likelihood of that happening. The McCain supporters in the room began to quietly leave, already admitting defeat.

And yet - and yet the counts from Virginia and Florida were still too close to call. And the polling hadn't even ended in California and Hawaii. Mere seconds before the polls closed, Virginia was announced to have gone blue. And then the polls closed. And then it wasn't even a question - everyone knew how the west coast and Hawaii had polled. First MSNBC, then CNN. The words came up on the screen in glorious blue letters.

Barak Obama - President Elect.

The room erupted in cheers and screams. Everyone had a cell phone in their hand. People were turning to each other and telling each other, even as they knew that the other person had been sitting there the whole time, just for a chance to share the joy. I got ahold of my mother, who couldn't even hear me over the screaming in the background, but was just as happy as I was. She gleefully informed me that even Fox News had admitted defeat - that if Fox had called it for Obama, it must be true.

It simply felt unreal. The whole campus had erupted in celebration. Everyone we passed was cheering. I don't know where the McCain supporters went, but I find myself grateful that none of them felt the need to harsh our buzz. I didn't know what to do with myself. We wandered - from the big screen room outside, back to the room, back to my room in the dorm. And I received more calls - "If you aren't watching, turn your TV on. He's talking." No name, no need. Who "he" was didn't need an explanation - we all knew. President Obama.

If you haven't seen the speech, I suggest you watch it now. I think this one will probably be called "Yes We Can." I got a little teary, and I've already watched it three times.

Our generation has seen so much. We were born in the last days of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was in its death throes, and although we do not remember, the year I was born was the year the Berlin Wall fell.

Some of us remember a time when computers still ran on command-line, when KidPix was the only thing worth doing on a personal computer, when very few of us had the internet.

We have lived through three wars, although we only remember two. The Gulf War, and Operation Desert Storm, happened when most of us were too young to be paying attention to politics. And then there were the two wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We remember Enron and the dot-com bust, the steadily rising gas prices and the steadily failing housing market. We remember how hard it is to find and keep a job just to make a little money to go out on Saturday night.

We lived through the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember seeing the gutted, sagging building on television. What I remember most clearly were the children - the stories of the children. The pictures recovered from the rubble that I could have drawn, the small bodies taken from the dust that could have been mine.

We remember the connection of the world, when more and more of us logged on to the World Wide Web. We remember when there was no MySpace, when there was no Facebook. We remember the first time that we found out the news through the blogosphere faster than our parents found out through the television.

We lived through the incomprehensible horrors of Columbine and Virginia Tech, among others. Students in junior high and high school and college struggled to understand the kind of person who would do this to their fellow students.

We remember finding our anonymity on the internet, reveling in this world where nobody knew who we were and would never know - and we remember learning that it didn't matter if we were anonymous, that there were some statutes and tenets of basic human decency that transcended even into our private places.

We lived through the day when a handful of crazed, evil men crashed two planes into two towers (and one more into the Pentagon, and left United 93 burning in a Pennsylvania field due to the heroic actions of a few good men), killing thousands in an effort to destroy the foundations of our country.

We remember when we left the days of isolation behind us, when we could no longer disappear for hours on end, because we were constantly communicating - cell phones tethering us to each other, binding us together in one big group.

We lived through the loss of the city of New Orleans, when the floodwaters rose and a nation watched in horror.

We remember when we elected the first black president of the United States.

We take all these things and stir them up inside us - try to forget some, fiercely remember others. We as a generation are about to enter the world. Some of us have already graduated and attempt to secure a tenuous foothold in a tenuous economy. Some of us are already in college, watching the economy with a feeling of certain dread, for how can we afford to stay where we are when so much is failing? Some of us have yet to enter college, and do not yet realize just how much impact this election has on them - maybe you, unlike me, will not spend your first year in college staring at a loan with a $17,000 price tag.

Sometimes I think our generation feels like we don't measure up. When we look back at everything our parents and grandparents worked for - civil rights marches, anti-war protests, women's rights movements - we cast around desperately for a cause, for a fight to identify with. For a generation to move we need a disaster at our back and a leader at our front. Look up. We have left our disasters behind and gathered to push our leader to the top.

Look out, America. We are here. We have come to change your status quo.

Yes we can.