Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day

Well, it's finally here and thank goodness.

Especially in the last 24 hours, I have seen so many negative attack ads against Barack Obama; I didn't know that there were that many 529 groups in Iowa. I have to give kudos to the Republicans, for producing some very nice ads, but it's all for naught; America has decided and Barack Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in the polls. In retrospect, I am so glad that Hillary and company brought Jeremiah Wright out during the primaries so that we could decide that he was irrelavant and move on.

Today, Barack Obama will be elected President. I heard something on NPR last week that really touched me. A gentleman said, "Rosa sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Barack could run. Barack's running so that our children can fly." I think that, more than anything, this statement expresses how this election *is* about race. Barack, as a prominet American politician, will become a role-model for a generation of black children; he's highly educated, successful, influential and a family man. Who did you look up to when you were younger? What kind of difference did having that role model play in shaping your life?

Of course, this election isn't only about race, it is also about America coming to the realization that we are all in this together. For too long, we have embraced the idea that each person is independent from his neighbors, while turning a blind eye to the fact that, to get to work, to go to school, to check Facebook, we are standing on the shoulders of hundreds of thousands of others every day. We are starting to realize that we all play an important role, from the janitor to the CEO, everyone is an important part of the system. There has been so much talk about the redistribution of wealth, but folks, for the last 30 years, the redistribution of wealth has been upward, with the rich getting the best healthcare, the largest salary increases, the largest amount of influence, while the rest of us have lived with stagnat (relative to inflation) wages, an increasingly more selective healthcare system and disenfranchisement in our democracy. This is about to change.

Today, we will also see the worst in our country; as the richest nation in the world, we will see hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people discover that they were dropped from voter registration rolls, wait in hours-long lines to cast a single ballot, have their votes switched by electronic voting machines with no paper-trail, or be otherwise denied the right to vote in myriad other ways. You think 2000 was a mess? I predict that the problems with this election will dwarf even the butterfly ballots and hanging chads in Florida. Fortunately, Obama will win in a landslide and the corruption and intimidation won't be enough to affect the outcome of the election.

Today, we will change the direction of our country. Over the next four years, we will ensure that all citizens have access to healthcare, we will strengthen our unions so that we can see real wage growth, we will reform our election laws so that our elections are more accurate and verifiable, we will become stewards of the earth and we will end the pointless, misdirected war in Iraq.

The road ahead is long and won't always be easy, but the future looks very bright; I am excited.

If you haven't already voted, please vote for Barack Obama. Something historic will happen today; I invite you to be part of it.

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