Philadelphia's City Paper captures the mood at DU.
How This Feels
It can be hard to get our heads around the fact that Barack Obama is winning.
by Doron Taussig
Published: Oct 29, 2008
For those of us who came of political age in the Bush era, it can be hard to get our heads around the fact that Barack Obama is winning. Our formative electoral experience was 2000, when Al Gore may well have won, but George Bush became president anyway. Then, after four years of incompetence and with a misguided war going badly, we got our hopes up in 2004 — only to see them buried under election returns from Ohio that, in retrospect, seem to have had an inevitability about them. Personally, I've reached a point where I can't really imagine John McCain giving a concession speech (especially when you factor in his inherent stubbornness, and the groundwork his campaign has been laying to dispute results). I feel like I've seen this movie before, and it doesn't end happily.
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And again, intellectually, it's clear that the good guy is winning. Which might be why the predominant emotion I'm associating with the election now is fear. Because without the nail-biting tension of the last two elections, the only concern left to occupy my mind is this paranoia I've developed that a progressive can't win the presidency, because this country can't get over the racial/cultural/too-proud-to-change-course psychosis that has defined it for my adult political life.
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Most of all, we hope that when the results come in on Tuesday, we'll find our best suspicions about our country confirmed, instead of our worst ones, and that when we look back on this day, we'll be able to say of course America got it together — she always does. Of all the questions implicit on this year's ballot, perhaps the biggest is one about who America is. We hope she's good.
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/10/30/how-this-feelsI had to hack the article up so I wouldn't exceed the copyright restrictions. So I do hope you'll click the link and read it in full. Heck, all of the articles in the election issue are quite good.
The Fishtown Effectby Isaiah Thompson
Can you be racist and vote Obama?
The Can't-Votersby Tom Namako
The Other IssuesThe ones that aren't being talked about
My Concession Speechby John McCain
Edited to change title.