by Joyce Marcel
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.
November 16, 2008
SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIVERED
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DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Well, our long national nightmare is over. America had its Frank Capra moment, Mr. Smith is going to Washington after all, and it's about time.
For weeks, the polls have been saying that Barack Obama had the presidential race sewn up, that he was going to be our 44th president.
But I couldn't unclench my heart enough to believe it. Not after two stolen presidential elections, the deliberate destruction of the Constitution, two failed unilateral wars, torture as national policy, kangaroo courts and the looting of the American economy.
Not after "he's a terrorist" and "he's a Muslim" and Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and Bill Ayers.
I was acting, in fact, the way an abused woman acts, and for the very same reasons. I'd been brutalized by eight years of radical Republican rule. How could I trust the American people to finally do the right thing?
I wasn't alone in this. My husband, the political junkie who had been studying the polls for months, was certain of an Obama victory. He spent most of this past month trying to coax the fear out of me, my mother and my friends.
But I was never sure. I woke up Tuesday morning with the room spinning and dealt with vertigo most of the day. I was trembling, all fear and nerves. Would the voter turnout be small? Would the margins be marginal? Would the Republicans be able to steal the election again? Could I handle a John McCain presidency? What would I do if he won?
The tension mounted. I hid behind house-cleaning, cooking and "Law & Order" reruns.
But somewhere around 9:30 p.m., when the electoral count went to 200-90, I started to relax.
America was electing a black man as president. A man who has lived in other countries and knows that despite all the religious and cultural differences, we are brothers and sisters under the skin. A man who will be less likely to shrug off blood in the streets because it belongs to some strange and unknown "other." A man who will negotiate before he invades and bombs.
It was the highest voter turnout since 1908, the papers said. As I write, the electoral count is 349 to 147.
America has rejoined the world and the whole world is rejoicing. The only American exceptionalism we will celebrate now is that we defeated tyranny at the ballot box.
True, it was hard work. It was eight years of hell, and to our eternal discredit, the blatant hypocrisy leading up to the invasion of Iraq didn't bring us out into the streets. (Although many of us, including Obama, recognized the sham excuses for what they were.) The photos of Abu Ghraib didn't bring us out into the streets. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their politics of cruelty and arrogance didn't bring us out into the streets.
No, it was their politics of greed that finally work up the American people. It was their attack on our pocketbooks that sealed Obama's win.
In fact, I still can't believe that 55.8 million people think that John McCain, who waged a campaign of lies, anger and contempt, who thought Palin was an acceptable running mate, who thought American blood must be shed to maintain the illusion of a united Iraq (when everyone in Windham County, thanks to Peter Galbraith, knows that the country split into three parts years ago), would make a better president.
(And who was the man making that graceful concession speech? Why hadn't he ever appeared on the campaign trail?)
And yes, Sen. McCain, please explain why Cubans in Miami were robocalled this week and told that Castro had endorsed Obama? Why were others told they could vote by phone? You still have a lot of explaining to do.
So yes, I'm angry about the past eight years. But when I looked at the faces of those thousands of people all across the country gathering to celebrate Obama's win, all I saw was joy and hope. We really want to be a better country. We really don't want to be divided by race or religion or cultural beliefs any longer.
By 11 p.m., when the election was called for Obama, there were 240,000 people celebrating in the streets of Chicago's Grant Park alone. Cameras focused on the tears in the eyes of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. The students of Spelman College in Atlanta were crying. I was crying, too.
When they played Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" in Grant Park, the world let out its collective breath.
Obama spoke well, as he always does. "Put your hands on the arc of history and bend it once again," he said. "Yes we can," he said. And most important, "This is not the change we seek. This is the chance for change."
By the end of his speech, even Obama was in tears.
"I will never lie to you," he said.
So this is what I would like to see from him after his first 100 days: he comes on television and gives us an accurate reading of the damage done. He issues criminal arrest warrants for Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield. He closes Guantánamo. He moves to quickly shore up the FDA, the EPA and the foreign service. He starts working on re-regulating Wall Street. He strengthens the endangered species lists. He starts working on a national health care system.
Yes, our long national nightmare is over and we can unclench our hearts.
And I can't wait until I can once again attack a president for not being sufficiently progressive, instead of for being criminal, incompetent and deluded.
Joyce Marcel is a journalist whose first collection of columns, "A Thousand Words or Less," can be ordered from her website, joycemarcel.com. She can be reached at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2012 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.