Joy From Historic Obama Campaign

November 5, 2008 – 4:47 am

Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.

To type those words brings back the euphoria of the first few minutes after the words flashed on the blurry screen of the projector lugged in at the last minute to update all of us at the Northeast Philly headquarters on the results.

I have been awake for many, many hours.

I woke up at 4:30 AM to arrive at my staging location by 5:30.

Like millions of others across the country, I spent the whole day working. I watched the polls, knocked on doors, brought coffee and donuts to poll workers, and I talked to hundreds of voters.

There was a little high every time someone smiled at us and said, “I voted this morning!”

There was an even bigger high when the pollworkers told us that turnout was double what they normally see.

There was an almost unbeatable high when our state was called for our candidate almost as soon as the polls closed.

But nothing comes close to the feeling we got when, in a roomful of people who’ve worked those same long hours, the screen told us: Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.

This campaign has seemed endless. After countless primary battles, it feels for a moment as though there has to be another one after this—this can’t be over. It almost seems too easy. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (3)

Barack Obama Makes History

November 4, 2008 – 10:51 pm

“…What light through yonder window breaks?”

The world is changing.

Well, it is, in fact, always in a state of flux, but no more is it evident than on days like today - days when your heart is set alight like a great big shooting star in swift and blazing motion, because it simply cannot feel any other way.

Before he died, Tupac Shakur once sang that “although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a black President.”

Whether one believes in a life beyond this one, one can imagine Tupac smiling right now.

Now, Tupac is probably not the kind of person you would expect me to be quoting on this occasion, but I can’t help but consider the anxiety of his music, its frustration, and the occasional flashes of hope - and feel deep regret that he did not live long enough to see this day.

Barack Obama is inheriting a country in turmoil. Our economy has been all but flushed down the toilet, the nation is deeply divided, and our foreign policy has recently been conducted with all the grace of a stumbling drunk at the ballet. There is no telling what the next four years will bring us.

But today we have a reason to hope, if simply because we have come together as a nation and decided to change our course.

As John McCain pointed out in his concession speech: our country has a terrifying history of racism, and racism is still part of the fabric of our society. In Barack Obama, we now have a symbol of how racism can be overcome, or at the very least, beaten down long enough to achieve real evolution (and although Sarah Palin’s political career still looks promising wherein her base is concerned, we now have reason to believe that “evolution” will not become a dirty word any time soon).

We have miles to go before we sleep, but with Obama’s election, the journey takes on a whole new meaning.

Good luck, Obama. And God bless.

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, election 08, politics | Comments (0)

Election ‘08: High Anxiety

November 4, 2008 – 7:37 pm

Watching this election, electronically linked up to voters across the United States and beyond, is a surreal and beautiful experience.

I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t matter what the outcome is.

After all, we at GlobalComment here do not quite care about the political leanings of our readers, as long as said readers are thoughtful and well-informed. Yet as an individual, not a journalist, I am hoping for change. I am hoping, in short, for Obama.

This election has been ugly - both on the national and local level. In North Carolina, my home state, Elizabeth Dole (a fellow Duke grad, to add insult to injury), overstepped all boundaries of decency in attacking her opponent in the Senate race. Unlike the mainstream GOP platform, which excels at insidious subtleties and dogwhistles, Liddy Dole went ahead and called Kay Hagan “godless,” quite a big deal in the Bible Belt.

It is looking as though this vicious strategy has backfired, and I am glad.

If there is one thing that I am sure of is that our country does not wish to go back to the McCarthy era, wherein “real Americans” were separated from “fake Americans,” and suspicion and paranoia held sway. No matter how tough it may get in the years to come, thought-crime has little to do with what the United States stands for.

Tonight, I had the chance to speak to many Americans: both expats and those who call the Middle East their home. Interestingly, most Muslims I have spoken to were people who previously voted for Bush, and who have become so disgusted with “Muslim” being used a slur in this election, that they have opted for Obama, disregarding his comparatively liberal policies.

Regardless of religion, all folks I have chatted with today confessed to anxiety, both in terms of the election and in terms of the future. No matter who wins this year, we may be in for a number of bleak years, that much has been accepted by most everyone.

But as Bob Dylan sang, “the hour before dawn is the darkest.” Alongside anxiety is the no-nonsense belief that we will find our way, come hell or high water or voter fraud.

Stay with us for more election updates & check out the Feministe election liveblog, in which Natalia is a participant.

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, election 08, middle east, north america, politics | Comments (0)

The Road Most Travelled By - The Unraveling of the GOP

November 3, 2008 – 4:24 pm

In the final hours of this marathon election, all the polls are predicting an Obama victory. Whether this outcome is confirmed or not, the Republican party is in need of some serious soul-searching.

Once again, as in 2000 and 2004, the Republicans are seeking to win the election on the basis of a highly cynical strategy fueled by negativity. In the words of Joe Biden, they are taking the lowest road to the highest office in the land.

Instead of damaging Obama’s reputation, the McCain/Palin ticket has managed to damage its own. With Palin running around the country talking of a “real America” that apparently exists only in the rural areas away from the “elitist” cities, one can only wonder why the party would intentionally want to narrow its base in this manner.

Are the Republicans now confining themselves to becoming solely the party of sparsely populated farms, villages, and little suburbs? Seems foolish, to say the least.

Palin has done more than alienate urban dwellers, of course. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in Columnist, election 08, north america, politics, racism | Comments (3)

I Can See the Campaign Finish Line

November 3, 2008 – 11:40 am

Is it just me, or did this seem like the longest election campaign in the history of democracy?

Seriously, the primaries seemed to take forever and a day to get through. Every single word a perspective candidate said was scrutinized to death in search of hidden meanings. It felt like being instructed to play a Pink Floyd album backwards in search of subliminal messages.

Finally when I was sick to death of hearing the daily goings on of Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain, they settled on the Maverick POW from Arizona. Though Biden, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all ran, it was really only ever between Clinton and Obama. Oh the waste of paper for the speeches written by candidates that never had a snowball’s chance in hell. Will the trees forgive us this one?

Cue, the balloons and patriotic music: we finally hit the conventions. Between the rhetoric and the political grandstanding I damn near lost my lunch. There was nowhere to hide. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (0)

McCain the Postmodern Candidate

November 2, 2008 – 10:21 am

Tom Brokaw was on Charlie Rose the other day and he said that Barack Obama could be our first “postmodern” president. Brokaw admitted that the didn’t know what postmodernism was, but whatever it was, Barack Obama was it.

From the context one could conclude that Brokaw wasn’t referring to any philosophical concept, but to fact that Obama didn’t grow up in the 60’s and that he wasn’t a baby-boomer like all other politicians before him. In other words he was trying to come up with a roundabout way of saying that Obama was young. According to that rather specious - and wrong - definition of the word, fine, Brokaw can pretend that Obama is a postmodern.

However, there are other, more accurate definitions of postmodern, and the primary one is the one that my philosopy advisor in college told me. It goes something like this: Post-modernism is the idea that there is no master narrative; that the world is composed of contingent, accidental and disconnected ideas, circumstances and events that have been brought haphazardly together.

“Postmodernists conceive of the world as a carnival,” concluded the good professor. He was a practicing postmodernist and dressed the part.

If you go by that definition - and pardon me for going with a JD/PhD over Brokaw - then it is not Obama, but John McCain, who has a chance of being America’s first postmodern president. One can surmise this by doing nothing other than looking at the Arizona Senator’s campaign. Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Arts & Literature, Columnist, election 08, essays, politics | Comments (8)

If the Democrats Win - Then What?

November 1, 2008 – 2:49 pm

“Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

That adage holds true for Barack Obama and likely for many presidents before him. Is it going to hold true for the American public in a couple of years?

We’ve had it with Republicans. They overreached, became increasingly unyielding and evermore narrow in terms of the interests to which they appealed, and they drove both our foreign and economic policies into the ditch in a stunning double display of ineptitude.

The utter irony of it all happens to be that the Republican candidate who had to go down with the ship was the only Republican on the national scene who for years decried the excesses of the right. Bush screwed McCain – and the nation – in 2000, and he screwed him again in 2008 by letting McCain take the fall for Bush’s incompetence.

The media cannot wait to gush about Obama. And the guy likely deserves it, as it is a feel-good story on many levels, and he does have very uplifting oratory.

It remains to be seen how the electoral college will shake out, but Obama should come in somewhere north of 340 of the 538 electoral votes out there in the arcane presidential electoral process. Likewise, he should enjoy a filibuster-proof senate majority while picking up another 20 to 30 congressional seats.

The nation, in short, is throwing the Democrats the car keys saying, “Here you go. Don’t screw it up.”

And that is the problem for the Democrats. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Business World, election 08, north america, politics | Comments (2)

Obama’s Final Pitch

October 31, 2008 – 2:08 pm

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Barack Obama’s biggest challenge as a candidate has been convincing people not to fear him, fear his difference, his skin color, his name. Luckily, it is a task to which he has proven himself well suited.

Obama’s calm demeanor has been his biggest selling point through the ups and downs of the past few months, and his 30-minute infomercial ad was the icing on that cake. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (1)

The GOP’s Own: Women and Inappropriate Remarks Against Sarah Palin

October 30, 2008 – 1:59 pm

It seems as though there is dissent in the ranks of the Palin/McCain campaign. This past weekend anonymous McCain staffers released a less than pleasant statement regarding Palins performance, and willingness to support McCain’s message. It seems that they have a “rogue” vice presidential candidate on their hands.

According to CNN, a McCain staffer was quoted as saying, “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone. She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else”.

“Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

Another staffer has even gone as far as to label her a “whack job.”

Well, it seems that McCain didn’t get the submissive vice presidential candidate that he wanted. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, feminism, politics, women | Comments (0)

November 4th and Obama’s Hereafter

October 28, 2008 – 10:42 am

Jack Carter is a businessman and politician. He is the son of former United States President Jimmy Carter.

With just a few days left until the election, Sen. Obama has a substantial lead over Sen. McCain. While many Democrats remember elections in 2000 and 2004 and fear that lead will somehow evaporate, I expect the margin to hold.

For all the negative advertising, its polling impact seems minimal. McCain has little else to offer, and the economy – represented by falling global stock markets – is still stealing the headlines.

Governor Palin has become a drag on the campaign, witnessed by the increasing number of high level moderate Republicans, including Colin Powell, who are endorsing Obama. And the “Experience Issue”, once the cornerstone of McCain’s campaign, has collapsed beneath the weight of his sporadic actions over the last two months, including the Palin VP pick.

On the other hand, Obama still has the advantages he began with in September: he’s a better campaigner; his issues are much more in line with the voters; he’s got the best campaign strategists and organization; he has substantially more money to spend; and, most people don’t want to vote for Republicans this year, anyhow.

Barring some political catastrophe, the combination of McCain’s problems and Obama’s assets should, if anything, continue to widen the lead. Which brings up some interesting questions… Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (1)