Tomorrow has come November 4th, 2008
Chicago
By the time you read this, the world would have changed. The last stretch of that process is on right now, as a record number of Americans line up to vote on Tuesday. They don’t want history to pass them by–again–so two third of those eligible are expected to turn up, the highest turnout since 1908.
As I write this a block away from Grant Park, where an Obama victory rally is planned in about 12 hours, Barack himself is voting, accompanied by his wife Michelle in a Chicago booth. This is a live event on all major news channels.
He had just one word for his audience at his last campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia late on Monday night: “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow has come. He appears cool, smiling, talking to Michelle and his daughters, on a day his grandmother Madelyn Dunham (the woman who “poured everything she had” into Obama) would have loved to have seen. She died at 86 on Monday.
He was very close to her, but in an understated way, he’s moved on. He takes an incredibly long time to fill up the ballot. If everyone takes this long (about 10 minutes at the very least) then a lot of people will be left standing.
Joe Biden, who the democratic campaign made sure would vote in Delaware right after the Obamas finished in Chicago–just as a bit of airtime freed up–got the job done real quick. For those standing in queues in precincts around the country, this is more like it. Some of them came to vote as early as 5.30 in the morning–spending an acceptable hour and a half to complete voting. Already, there have been as many as 11,000 complaints of overcrowding and machine malfuctions, a notable complaint came in from veteran journalist Barbara Walters.
The polls all have Obama ahead: solid leads beyond margins of error that will lead to a resounding victory that no one thought was possible as he entered the race for the democratic nomination so many months ago.
He outlasted the Clintons. He also outspent them–which tells you what a strong idea he was selling. “Not a red America or a blue America, but a United States of America.” To the youth, on whom so much will depend today, he was the one they were waiting for.
When stood up to give speeches, he seemed to read poetry. When he sat down to listen–to opponents in a debate, for instance–he looked like a languid jazz musician who’s set his instrument down briefly, but is ready to pick it up and answer by hitting notes so precise they would have to be mathematical.
The economic crisis helped his cause. People became colourblind as their savings got wiped out and their houses foreclosed, they just wanted the right man for the job. Even by elimination, John McCain wasn’t the man: he blundered through the height of the crisis, at one point suspending his campaign to go to Washington.
This was inexplicable, because he said absolutely nothing there, and did even less. He also ensured that he hollowed out the experience argument against Obama by choosing Sarah Palin, who fumbled through the campaign like a B-list impostor trying to play vice-presidential candidate.
As if to confirm this (widely-held) view she told a reporter who asked her who she had voted for as she left a booth in Wassilla, Alaska, that she was excercising her right to privacy by keeping that information confidential.
That she may, perhaps by an act of God, still get to the White House is gives people the shivers even though halloween is over. It is much more likely that she will go back to shooting poor Alaskan animals from the air, in time to hoard meat for the winter, forcing the joke writers for the networks to go into hibernation.
This might change the world for the better. But there are far more profound changes in the offing. Should Obama get elected, the signal that the United States sends out to the world is that it has genuinely transformed. That it is not in denial about the financially destructive, militarily senseless and gravely injurious addiction of the Bush years, and is ready for rehab.
A large number of Americans don’t like the selfish, arrogant, consumptive, overweight–and now poor–person they see in the mirror the world holds up to them. They view this election as a chance to correct that.
Grant Park is getting ready. There’s an unprecedented number of cop cars. There are ribbons of roadblocks across orange stumps everywhere. Some say a million people will turn up. But it seems quiet in the morning, unless you listen hard to the sounds of the Chicago. The anthem of the election is playing out as traffic rolls down the streets and voters march to their booths, keeping time to ‘Yes we can, yes we can.’
Tags: Avirook Sen, Barack Obama, Chicago, Grant Park, John McCain, US Elections 2008
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