"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer." Barack Obama opened his acceptance speech, Tuesday night.
On that cold November night, virtually everyone was crowded around a television waiting for the results. Barack Obama defeated John McCain, by over double McCain's electoral vote, 364-173.
Many Americans have grown tired of the election, listening for twenty-one months, listening to the deafening rhetoric from Republicans, Democrats and Independents. As John McCain put it during his concession speech, "we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly."
During his concession, McCain congratulated Barack Obama to the boos of his supporters. While many of us are not surprised that his supporters would be disappointed, and that they have been booing the mentioning of Obama's name for weeks, McCain took the high road pausing midsentence with a simple "please".
Calling his supporters to put their partisan battle to support our president-elect, McCain went on to say, "… it's natural tonight to feel some disappointment, but tomorrow we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought -- we fought as hard as we could."
We are in an age where an African-American man is capable of being elected president of the United States of America. So many people thought that they would never see the day.
McCain was hanging by a wire for the last few days, and he tried to keep an optimistic view of the progress of his campaign. But when the results for Ohio came in for Obama, it had become clear to everyone that McCain had no chance of winning, since no republican had won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Obama held his acceptance speech in Chicago, to a sea of people. Even when the victory party was an arrogant move in the last few days of the campaign, it turned out to be an over-the-top event.
Sadly, of all the people that were at the event, the most important person to Obama was not: his grandmother. Following the announcement of her death Monday morning, Obama continued to campaign in Florida. And while his victory was storybook-like, the happy ending was not so happy, since his beloved Grandmother did not live to see the day where her grandson was able to become president of the United States.
Like most politicians, during his speech, Obama announced "This is your victory". However cliché that statement is, it still touches the heart of every supporter drowning in that crowd; drowning in people as well as tears. Many Obama supporters, such as Jesse Jackson, could not keep their eyes dry through the speech. In such a powerful hour, every heartbeat seemed to be in sync.
Since Obama won, we can imagine that there will some big changes in healthcare, taxes, and many other issues. Finally, the rich will be paying a similar annual percentage as the middle class, and most of our citizens can finally receive healthcare without having to go through insurance company loopholes.
If everything goes to Obama's plan, which is very unlikely, America will be out of Iraq and there will be more of a focus on Afghanistan. And no longer will America have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars a day on a meaningless occupancy.
Hopefully, America will be more prone to embracing alternative fuels, and getting over our addiction to not just foreign oil, but oil in general. With the currently innovative technologies, such as a water powered car (from Japan) or the compressed air powered car (from France), and be able to lower gas prices to where they were before GWB took office those eight long years ago.
This was truly a very historic election; the gravity of the outcome could be felt by everyone. Everyone knows that the history of the country would change Tuesday night, either for Obama or McCain. With the first ever African-American politician to ever taker the office of president, or the oldest man to take office, the election of 2008 was one to go down in the history books.
But on this November night we, as a nation, have taken a giant step forward in the march toward true equality amongst men, what our founding fathers dreamt of all those centuries ago. With numerous citizens from many foreign countries staying up in their respective time zones in order to watch history be made here in our own turf, cheers could be heard all around the world when it was announced that Obama would be our president-elect. Not to mention the appreciation from Kenya, a country who declared November 6th a national holiday to celebrate Obama's victory.
As commentator for MSNBC, Keith Olbermann put it, "You've seen the video tapes of Walter Cronkite the night that the men landed on the Moon for the first time, when Neil Armstrong stepped out and he could just barely get out monosyllables-- Politically, that's what this is. This is man on
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