Victory

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004:  “I decided I would let the dawn be the omen. If we had a spectacular sunrise, no matter who won, things were going to be all right. A rainy, drizzly, weeping dawn would foretell of dire consequences for our nation. Funny thing…I knew the forecast was for sun today…knew the rain had stopped and the clouds had scuttled away before we went to bed last night. I think I was creating a scenario in my mind where my "good omen" daybreak was more than likely to happen.

“But we didn’t have a spectacular sunrise. The day dawned bright and brittle. The sun just marched up over the horizon, cold and hard in the east. And it frosted last night…the first frost of the season. The bright hard rays of the rising sun glittered off the sodden masses of my garden flowers that were killed by the frost. So, tell me…what kind of omen is that?”

 

Wednesday, November 5, 2008:   “… dawned grey and drizzly and dark…very much a typical late autumn day in the Pacific Northwest.

“Yet I jumped out of bed, bustled into the café and gushed to my staff and any customer within earshot:

“Isn’t it a beautiful day!"

“And I wasn’t talking about the weather.”

 

Wednesday, November 7, 2012: 

Anyone carrying this picture in her sidebar for four years would certainly be expected to have something to say about the 2012 election results.  So I will not disappoint…

 

This year, I made a tacit agreement with myself to keep as far away from campaign coverage as I could possibly get—from the primaries to the conventions and through the nationally televised stump-speech duels erroneously billed as “debates.”   If I’ve learned nothing else from closely following the two presidential elections previous to this one, I’ve learned to loathe the hype and mistrust the fickle whims of the American electorate—or at least as those whims are reported by our intrepid sensation-starved media.

 

In 2004, I truly believed there were people out there who might be undecided about for whom to cast their vote—folks who might be persuaded by what I believed to be rational arguments against allowing the Bush Administration four more years to wreak havoc upon the nation and the world.  So I kept my keyboard at the ready and produced a significant collection of political rants.  As if something that I said could change even one “misguided” mind.

 

In 2008, I was encouraged that the American people seemed to be so DONE with Republican national leadership that they would set aside a centuries-old tradition of racial bias to elect the first black president of the United States.  Frankly, I didn’t think we had it in us.  I was pleasantly surprised, stoked for the sweeping changes I expected to follow this historic event, and thoroughly relieved to see the back of George W. Bush and his gang of thieves.    

 

We all know how that turned out.  The “change” part, that is.  For the past four years, the Republican congressional leadership, partnered with a media where the loudest voices preach an unfettered, outrageous and irresponsible right-wing sermon, have proven that ugly, avaricious fear-mongering did not disappear with George W. Bush.  Not only did the rhetoric continue, it got louder and more outrageous.   Birthers.  “Obamacare.”   Socialism.  The president is a Muslim.  Thinly veiled racial slurs.  And some not veiled at all.

 

And then there is the Congressional gridlock.  The party out of power pulled out all the stops to fulfill its publicly professed agenda—to Make This President Fail.  They vilified the man and demonized his policies; and the American people ate it up…with two spoons and a shovel.  There has been little of hope and/or change allowed to escape the black hole of Washington for the past four years.

 

Yet…here it is, November 7^th, 2012, and we have managed to re-elect this man.  Pundits and disgruntled Republicans point at the closeness of the popular vote (“The Donald” tweeted about it, in his bombastically stupid way), declare that the country is still divided and Mr. Obama has, if anything, lost the support of some of the folks who rallied to his cause in 2008.

 

I maintain that, if anything, this victory is greater than the first.  Despite four years of hounding by the opposition, despite losing the support of progressives of his own party, despite herculean voter-suppression efforts launched by forces interested in assuring his defeat, despite the amnesia suffered by an American electorate which has become largely convinced Mr. Obama caused the problems he inherited upon becoming president four years ago (as Mr. Obama accurately predicted would happen)…

 

This man—the first black President of the United States—will  be President  for four more years. 

 

And I, for one, would rather suffer through four more years of legislative gridlock presided over by Barack Obama than see the clock rolled back on everything from health care reform to women’s rights by a Republican administration held hostage by extreme right wing interests. 

 

Hail, indeed, to the chief.  Let’s all wish him good luck.  And let’s set our sights to help him achieve it.