Election Night, Historic Night

5:10 P.M. We just cast our votes at the Methodist Church on Anapamu Street. The lines were short and the poll workers chipper. During the day people kept asking me if I had voted; most of them had and wore stickers to prove it. Obviously, this is not a run-of-the-mill, ho-hum election; people are into it, hopeful. We waited until late in the day so we could take our kids with us.

At this moment MSNBC has Obama at 103 electoral votes and McCain at 58. I wonder what McCain is doing right now…probably taking a nap and hoping that he’ll wake up to a stunning upset. McCain clearly believes in fantasies and Hollywood endings, which is why he choose Sarah Palin as his running mate…I’m still trying to understand what his Brain Trust was snorting when they tapped Palin. It’s as if they tossed some names in a hat, closed their eyes, reached in…

Speaking of Palin, I saw that cipher on TV last night, regurgitating the same tired clichés that Republicans have employed for years, still straining, on the night before the election, to tar Obama with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, and to make the unconvincing claim – except to a cadre of die hard Republicans, rednecks, racists, and utter morons – that Obama is a socialist.

Why is MSNBC giving Tom Delay a forum? The prick is a criminal, a disgraced no-good unrepentant criminal who doesn’t deserve to speak to a national audience; of course the rat predicts that a Democratic majority in Congress will “ruin” the American economy. Huh? DeLay was a swaggering power broker in Bush’s first term and did a wonderful job terrorizing Democrats while transferring wealth to the richest Americans and pissing on the rest of us. DeLay wielded power like a Roman proconsul, sparing no one.

The Talking Heads are jabbering like barroom drunks, making projections, predictions and prognostications, most of which will be disproved by the time the night is through. But there’s air time to fill while the numbers trickle in so they need to say something.

The Big Board shows Obama at 175 and McCain at 76. Thousands of Obama supporters are gathering in Grant Park in Chicago. The Deep South goes for McCain – no surprise there -- old habits die hard.

I read this morning that Maya Angelou hoped that an Obama victory would signal that the people of the United States have finally grown up, thrown off the shackles of fear and racism and bigotry, and entered adulthood. Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. After RFK went down the same way.

The Talking Heads are now saying that Obama will win Ohio! This is a huge development. In 2004 I went to bed thinking John Kerry would squeak out a victory there and woke up to discover that Bush had taken the state – by fraud as we would later learn.

Virginia. Florida. North Carolina. Indiana. All too close to call at this hour, 7:03 P.M. on my end of the continent. Iowa goes for Obama with 7 electoral votes. Should the current trend hold and Obama win the election, I wonder what will become of the Republican Party. It will be a smaller party, even more right-wing and wacky than it is today, and just as apt to hitch its wagon to a wingnut like Sarah Palin. Or Huckabee. Or maybe they’ll pass the baton to Pat Buchanan.

I wonder what is going through John McCain’s mind right now. Is he working on his concession speech or maybe staring at the developing scene in Grant Park and wetting his Depends? Cindy is no doubt by his side, as she always is, now drug-free though still high-strung and as inclined to psychological meltdown as her hubby is. I have a hunch that she’s thinking: “You owe me old man, big time. I followed you from town to city to hamlet, from gated community to country club, from Wal-Mart to 7-11, from the Waldorf-Astoria to the Biltmore. I’m tired! I’m sick of politics, of your political aspirations, and of all the phony people that have surrounded us for the past year! I want to go home, but I can’t decide to which of our eight homes.”

MSNBC just called it for Barack Obama. Can it be true? Finally, an African-American in the White House! What a tremendous First Family the Obama’s will be -- bright man, smart woman, lovely children. And not white! Finally, finally, finally, after all these years, after all the lynchings and beatings and shootings, after all the dreams deferred and denied…now we can call ourselves Americans. Now we have an opportunity to live up to our most cherished ideals.

OK, the Talking Heads are getting mushy and teary-eyed. Rachel Maddow is crying like a baby. My 12-year-old son just commented that Sarah Palin is only a footnote now. The boy is so happy that the Era of Bush is nearly over that he’s bouncing off the walls. On the TV Jesse Jackson is teary-eyed. This is amazing. I almost can’t believe it. Not only did Obama win Ohio, he also won Florida! Florida – the Bush backyard.

The electoral count is 333 to 156. An emphatic statement. A dramatic repudiation of the last eight wasted years.

McCain is conceding now before his faithful, and actually sounding like a reasonable man, like a US Senator, like a gracious statesman. Where has this version of John McCain been since August? McCain’s crowd in Arizona is so lily white that I need my Ray-Bans. McCain’s people are chanting “USA! USA!”

Waiting for the man now, for Barack Obama to take the stage before a throng estimated at 100,000. What does it mean that the voters of America have elected an African-American man president? What does it mean for our tomorrow?

And here he is, conjuring FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., and RFK. Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can. After eight years of being told that only some of us can, that only some of us are worthy, that only some of us matter. Yes we can. Yes we can. Together as Americans. All of us.

That’s worth thinking about on this unbelievable night.