Election High

I am still elated over the election. On Tuesday night, I joined my jam group at Lindsay's house. We ate chili, played music with the T.V. on but muted, cranked up the sound when there was something important to watch. It was very fun. I was so excited that Colorado was going blue--and embarrased that Kentucky did not. I thought both speeches were great--that of McCain and that of Obama. Obama seemed very presidential and serious--he knows how hard his job is going to be. His work is indeed cut out for him. I think he can handle it.

The next day I didn't go to work, but spent the first part of the day reviewing the election results and following the states that still hadn't been called--Missouri and North Carolina. I suddenly realized that my brother-in-law, Kevin, would be home and I called him to chat about everything. My sister, Leslie, and Kevin live in Illinois and have been die-hard Obama fans for a long time. The weekend before the election, Kevin went to Iowa for the Obama campaign and knocked on doors to get out the vote. When we chewed over the details of the election on Tuesday, he said that the Obama campaign had bussed 5,000 people to Indianapolis to get out the vote. Holy cow--it worked. Indiana, one of the most interesting battleground states went blue--with the help of 100,000 Obama votes in Indianapolis. Wow.

The commentators on CNN were talking with awe about the Obama campaign--they all gave it a thumbs up for being the best run campaign in history. I heard that they targeted 600,000 voters in Florida who were eligible to vote in the last election--but did not do so. And guess what--Florida went blue. What a tremendous, smart, strategic effort.

This election means so much for the African American people. It brought tears to my eyes to see Jesse Jackson weeping in the crowd at Grant Park. Althought he did some questionable things during this election, he has been at the forefront of the battle for African American rights for a long time and this meant so much to him and so many others.

Finally, I can't close without talking about the halogram. I watched in amusement early in the evening when CNN explained they were going to bring a reporter into their newsroom via halogram. Lo and behold--she appeared. She was in Chicago, in a tent, with 30 something HD cameras focused on her. She remarked that she was following in the footsteps of Princess Leah--I thought--Yes! I studied her; she was just kind of floating there--just like Leah--or I recall a halogram used on a Star Trek episode or two. After a while, I thought, "Wow. It took this long for them to figure out how to do this! Yep--40 years or so."