A sign of brilliance is counting brilliant people among your friends

This is a brilliant eye witness account of one internet friend's voting experience in OH.

I have permission to share!

credit scottish_like.

1.
I have to leave town this week for poetry gigs out of state, so today seemed like a good time to try out the Board of Elections early voting option. I’ve never voted outside of designated voting days before, so I’m looking forward to putting on my “I voted!” sticker three days before everyone else. I drive downtown, put 45 minutes on the meter, and head over to the BOE to vote. It’s history any way this election goes – even on the Republican side, as far as I’m concerned – so it’s an exciting time. The sun is out and the cold is biting, but playfully so.

Then I see the voting line.

The voting line-that-is-a-mosh-pit is, literally, the longest line I’ve ever stood in for anything: coveted concert tickets, new roller coaster rides, the DMV…all pale in comparison to this line. When I see this line at 9:30 on a cold Saturday morning I immediately begin to hope, not for change in Washington, but that the meter maids will be lenient. This is the kind of line that kills cellphones and makes lifetime friends out of complete strangers. I am reasonably sure I saw a man propose to a woman in line at one spot, and after about fifty yards of shuffling feet and cracking knees, they’d had a wedding ceremony. By the time they reach the registration table they’ll be able to turn in divorce paperwork with their ballots.

In my search for the end of the line I run into a family that I help at my day job at the public library. They stand at a coveted midpoint in the line, well into the building and warm. We shake hands, exchange greetings. As I step away to continue looking for the end of the line, the mother of the clan waves her hand at me to join them in line where they are. I beg off politely and keep moving. You don’t ditch history.

The line snakes through every crevice of the building, then back outside, then back in. I got into line twenty feet from the registration table, but ended up being shuffled back out the doors and around the back of the building, into an alley. Election workers walk the line, imploring people not to leave, to stick with the cause, assuring everyone they would get to vote. Thirty minutes in line and the cold is setting in firm. The line is moving at a good clip, but it isn’t shrinking. People keep getting in line despite the fact that it puts them in an alley behind the building standing on ice patches in some spots. The line has become a magical thing, what the Cheetos-adled denizens who play Dungeons & Dragons would call a +10 Pitcher of Unending Democracy.

The building across the street has three aerial antennas on its roof, like Calgary crosses at noon. I’ve driven by that building my whole life and never before noticed them. I try not to read too much into the vision.

2.
There are the typical characters you’d expect to find in a line like this: the joker with the most obvious punch line ever (“Can we stand in line? Yes we can!”); the hyperactive five year old who is cute for twenty minutes but becomes grating at twenty minutes and one second.

Two bodies behind me is the catch of the day: The Entitled. He is the one that, when faced with a line of committed voters stretching around a municipal building on a Saturday morning in a historic election cries “This is bullshit!” The Entitled is used to walking in and out of his own polls on his own steam, conveniently, without issue. The Entitled is arguing with a woman in front of him about his right to loudly give political commentary framed mostly with curses about standing in line. The Entitled has no class. You don’t curse history.

An unmarked car with a horn on its roof blasts the soundtrack of the Obama-infused video that overtook the internet, “Yes We Can”. It plays it over and over. And over. And over. After a while it switches to the theme from “Rocky”, then “Eye of the Tiger”. Apparently YouTube and Rocky Balboa are to be the coffee and donuts that election workers have been suggesting we’d receive, like lollipops handed out after a doctor’s visit. The snacks would never materialize. Sly must be a Republican.

I can’t believe I came anywhere near this building without my PSP.

3.
All of the buttons, signs and banners in sight are either local politicos or Obama’s. Not a Clinton sign in sight. Did she write off Columbus? Not have the money to spread until Tuesday? Was there a democratic gang fight before I showed up and the loser’s side had to take their signs home? I look for bruises and cuts, but none are to be found.

4.
If Obama’s black support in Columbus mirrors what it has in most of the country, Clinton’s lost this town hands-down. The line is predominantly black, like we’re Detroit or something, and it’s something to see. A plaque on the wall notes that the building has seen over 6.3 million visitors on its steps in the one hundred years it’s been there. I think we broke the record today just in black folks.

Barack Obama has done something that no politician at his level has done for a great many years: they have made the black vote feel important again. Please understand that I am not saying voting is unimportant to black people or that a candidate has never benefited from our vote. I am saying that, at the presidential level, the black vote is typically courted briefly, then bypassed, and quickly so. In most cases it is written off completely, with little or no attempt to address our existence, let alone our issues.

Contrast that tradition with the educational results of this election. Ask a hundred black people on the street what percentage of black voters Obama and Clinton have received in this election and you’ll find well over half of them know a rough idea (a ratio of approximately 80/10 respectively). Ask this same group of people what percentage of black voters John McCain has, or any Republican for that matter, and you’d be hard-pressed to get your number of respondents in double digits. It certainly isn’t because black people don’t vote Republican. It is because they do so in numbers so small they’re hardly worth talking about. Republicans and talking news heads know this, and the lessons to be derived from the pie charts that are afforded the Obama/Clinton contest are never drawn for McCain and his ilk.

By contrast, Obama has not only garnered the black vote; he has created a substantially larger black voting block than has ever existed. And while there are a number of reasons why that has occurred, the more important thing to note is the behavior of politicians and leaders now that this group exists. The black vote has become increasingly powerful this election in size and direction, more powerful than ever before most say…and Obama is, almost without fail, netting it in numbers never before seen even by strong black runners of the past.

In no other quarter than black leadership are the implications of this phenomenon more interesting. To look back on the interviews, quotes and platforms of many black so-called leaders a year ago is, in some cases, jarring. My personal favorite is a Minister Louis Farrakhan CNN clip done in early 2007, in which he’s asked about Obama (then not the powerful symbol that he is now).

Farrakhan: I like him very much. I’m not saying that I’m going to vote for him, but I like him. Because he’s fresh.

CNN: Do you think that Barack Obama is the answer to George Bush?

Farrakhan: No. I think he’s capable of being an answer, but who will provide him with the money so he can contend with Mrs. Clinton and her big bank? Or Giuliani and McCain and their growing bank? So the people that bankroll you, they’re the ones that ultimately call the tune.

CNN: So what are you saying?

Farrakhan: I’m saying no matter who sits in the White House, if you don’t uproot the structure that corrupts them you still don’t have a president. You have a figurehead.

CNN: Do you think Barack Obama can do that?

Farrakhan: No. Absolutely not. He knows some of the ugliness of politics ‘cause he’s been in it long enough. But the real wickedness of the face of politics…you’re looking right into the very face of Satan himself. And Satan doesn’t intend to be uprooted by an upstart from Chicago. Or Mrs. Clinton from New York.

This isn’t the worst rail to be found. Far worse things were said by other black leaders, even just a few months ago, when Hillary still had a shot. But I find Farrakhan’s statement one of the most compelling as a snapshot of black leadership at the time because it is shot straight, devoid of typical political mongering and reasonable. It contains hope, yet remains pragmatic. It is critical, yet fair for its time. It is a great barometer to measure the sentiment of its time.

And yet it almost seems unfair to pick on all of the fence-riding black leaders of a year ago (or less, if you ask Representative Lewis). No one could have predicted the groundswell of support that Obama would receive from all corners of our society. No one could foresee that Obama would become the political “Teflon Don”, or that he would generate record levels of funding from everyday people, or pick up 80 percent and more of the black vote with or without direct black leadership’s support. If anything, black leadership’s overall distance from him early in the campaign while the support from voters was building is telling, and should be looked at as a Socratic moment for the black community. We should now ask the question, “What makes you our leader?” We should take away from that dynamic – and its cousin, the mutating platform of political convention fast-approaching from the future – that maybe black leadership status should require more than a suit and tie, more than titles and television appearances. Maybe it should require check-ups of their knowledge of the issues of the day or written tests about what they did for black people last summer or a report card of their voting records. We should take away from this “fairy tale”, to use Bill Clinton’s words, that leadership that does not know what its supporters know or believe or desire is a poor leader. That, and that every great fairy tale has some seed of truth.

I had to add the words “Barack Obama” to the spell check dictionary in my software to get rid of the swarm of red snakes throughout this recollection. Change is on the horizon indeed.

5.
You’d think a polling place with a line like this only has a couple of booths, but that’s not the case. There are about twenty machines in the voting room proper, and staff at all corners logging people in to vote. No one is being turned away from voting, and even ID is not required. People have simply been moved to participate in the political process at never-before-seen levels, and no matter the outcome of the race, that’s something we should all be proud of.

6.
I get to my car at 11:30, almost two hours to the minute after parking it on Sixth Street. I can see the orange slip of a parking ticket flapping in the breeze, tucked firmly under my driver’s side windshield wiper. I pull it out and check the time on the ticket. 11:03. If I’d gotten to my car twenty minutes sooner I’d have gotten away scot-free, with my democracy and my wallet intact. I sigh and get in the car, then chuckle. I think about all of the people who died without ever having experienced the right to vote for centuries, and people who still live today in places with laws that disallow voting for some communities. I think about the people who were beaten or kicked or spat upon in marches, some that were threatened by police if they didn’t turn around and march away, all to build a case for voting rights. A parking ticket is a small price to pay for the right to vote. I take the voting sticker off of my shirt and I place it on the parking ticket. I figure it’ll be something for the people at the DMV to talk about for ten seconds when I mail it in.

Besides: if I ever meet Barack Obama, whether he becomes president or not, he can afford to give me my twenty bucks back.

The zen of defeat

If I were a better person I would feel sorry for HRC.

"If" being the operative word.

I am just petty enough to enjoy watching her implosion.

Not that it's all a function of my failure as a person, Hillary has made it difficult to feel sorry for her.

First, she painted herself as the indomitable snowwoman, perhaps rightfully so. But once one comes to view you as comprised of iron and will and not much else it becomes difficult to connect to them emotionally. We assume you do not have any emotions. This could well be a trap of being a woman on the big stage but I think it is just as much the fault of Hillary as a person. Other powerful women have somehow managed to appear both human and strong.

And then Hillary did the unforgiveable, according to my admittedly arbitrary standards: she underestimated her opponent.

Now, i'm sure pundits and historians will suggest that had nothing to do with Barack's race but all about his inexperience.

Bullshit.

I smell it, I call it.

HRC and camp know the working class, blue collar America that is all about racial equality in theory...not so much in practice. To say that knowledge in no way colored their perception of Barack's electability is foolish.

Hillary's campaign hung a significent part of her inevitability on a racist America not changing her stripes.

So you will have to forgive me if her miscalculation, and what that miscalculation says about my country, does not inspire in me pity for her position.

As she is fond of saying, she'll be alright after this election win or lose.

America's well-being isn't so guarenteed.

We deserve Barack Obama as much as we need him.

For about twenty seconds TN was too close to call. In the end it looks like it goes to Clinton. but it's close enough - they're talking less than 1 percent here folks - that Obama still picks up a significent amount of delegates. And the fact that it use to be comfortably in her column and he split it in half is still quite impressive.

He gets IL and I believe she took MA.

*pours some more wine*

And so the games begin.

First call of the night is an easy victory for Barack in GA.

All of the wonks want you to know that 43% of the Klan put away their robes long enough to vote for Chicken Obama George. /eyeroll

He carried almost 90% of the black vote in GA. Thank God. I was beginning to want negroes back into slavery -- all this self-defeating, ignorant hate for Obama was nauseating.

Now, apparently, we see if the Latinos are desperate enough to be white that they'll continue to eschew the candidate of color. Some anchor from telemundo was on MSNBC earlier and he's the only one I've heard say, flat out, that Latinos will not much "vote for an Afro-American" because he, presumably, may grow an afro that obscures their view from the border?

Whatever.

Good times!

The speech had already been written

Damn my full-time job and full-time school career! Because of all this real life stuff I was unable to hop-on immediately to share my realization about Ted Kennedy's emotional support for Barack Obama yesterday.

I spoke on the historic nature of the moment - Camelot, with all it's magic and prestige and unassailable political clout being willingly handed over to a black man. It was more than emotional and powerful, it was, I believe history will bear, the flag that announced the last lap of generational change in our political life.

Caroline and Patrick rounded out the picture of family solidarity but it was Ted Kennedy who drew on the emotional connection so many of us feel for the Kennedys that struck a chord with me. There is the obvious symbolism - a silver-haired, aging white man from the Northeast beside a young, spry, black Man with a trans-global heritage - but I saw something else as Teddy shook with passion about Barack.

This is the speech, perhaps, he'd hoped to one day give for JFK, Jr.

The emotional undercurrent of his support for Barack is the type normally resolved for the beloved children or tolerated in-laws in a family very cognizant of their legacy. It was like seeing an uncle groom his nephew to take over the family business.

Only this family business is American politics and Barack, white momma not withstanding, ain't exactly part of the family.

Really, could you not have seen the same intensity of emotion had Obama been replaced by JFK, JR?

Though he denied often any desire to run for political office it is no secret that almost everyone with fond memories of Camelot expected JFK, JR. to grow into an elected official.

And while we will never know what could have been it seems safe to assume that JFK, Jr. would have been the beneficiary of all the magic the Kennedy family can offer: an elder statesman hitting the campaign trail to work decades old relationships in his favor, a spotlight shy Caroline willing to emerge from the shadows to compare him to her father, Patrick serving as emcee for a crowd of rabid young voters thirsty for the kind of vision and inspiration that defined JFK and Bobby's legacy.

Only the candidate is black and his being black was never mentioned.

A pretty good day to be American.

My folk, my folk

It has taken a much more disciplined writer than myself to expound upon the real "fairy tale" in this Democratic race: Bill Clinton's supposed savior status within the black community.

Now, y'all, I know how some of us feel about a "good" job and we remember fondly the 90s as a time when you could tell your boss to kiss your black ass because you knew another "good" job right down the road. But time may have made your memory fuzzy, much in the way crack makes a whore disillusioned about her sex appeal. So consider this Clinton Re-hab:

The Clinton Fallacy: Did blacks really make big economic gains during the '90s?
By Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Posted Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008, at 12:46 PM ET

Hillary Clinton's campaign deployed President Bill Clinton in South Carolina for the specific purpose of delivering the black vote, aiming to remind African-Americans of the good times when Clinton was president. Which raises the question: Why do so many people think the Clinton years were good times for black America?

A hopeful African-American electorate was at the core of Bill Clinton's successful bids for the presidency. In many ways, the scandal-marred, deeply partisan years of the Clinton administration proved disappointing in the face of such early optimism.

Welfare reform, the growth of black imprisonment, and the public abandonment of progressive African-Americans like Lani Guinier are some of the most memorable racial disappointments of those years. Even through these disappointments, African-Americans were among Clinton's strongest supporters because many believed Clinton's era was an economic boon.

But there is evidence that Clinton's unmatched popularity among blacks confused many about the true economic impact of his presidency. In a 2005 article I co-authored in the Journal of Black Studies, I analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000. The data show that nearly a third of black Americans held false understandings of black economic conditions during the Clinton years.

By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s, barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites.

This belief is simply wrong.

Rest here:http://www.slate.com/id/2182745/

Camelot Comes To Harlem

I grew up listening to my Mother wax poetic about how altruistic the Kennedy's are.

My grandmother had three commerative plates on the wall, hung in a place of honor: White Jesus, Martin and Kennedy.

They are not southern or southern baptist or black but the genuiness of their spirit has, for numberous reasons, spoken to our community for generations now.

So as I sit here today and hear the Kennedy family effectively hand over the torch of their legacy to Barack Obama I am afraid that I may be dreaming.

Win or lose, this man not only looks presidential today - he looks like great American history in the making.

And who would know what that looks like better than a Kennedy?

Live stream: http://www.cnn.com/video/live/live.html?stream=stream1