Hope Isn't Supposed to be Real

I will just tell you, that sitting in a bar full of Portlanders, from ages 21 to 45, I have never seen anything like the moment when the CNN graphic came on the screen saying “Barack Obama, President-Elect.” People who have been voting since Nixon have said that this was the first time in their adult lives that it had even occurred to them that the government could be a force for good, and not an obstacle to overcome. Even when Obama had 230 votes with the polls still open in the 81-electorate West Coast, there was not a single person who was presuming victory for Obama. They kept saying that “theoretically,” he could win the election with just California reporting. It just seemed so obvious that over the span of the last eight years, and especially with 2004 in mind, everyone was just used to the bad news coming at the 11th hour.

Every time I look online at the news today, it’s still there: Barack Obama is going to be our President. I’m only 29 years old—I don’t have any experience having faith in our country. Having an Obama-Biden ticket take four hundred electoral votes isn’t something that really happens, it something we fantasize about over Thanksgiving break, of a world worth living in that might have, in another universe, actually existed.

I’ve got a new universe to get used to.