Tuesday 4 November 2008

Election Night


We've just come home from a small election night gathering at a friend's house - our hosts were Myrna and Garret, who are lefties like us, I guess, more to the left than most political liberals here, who don't necessarily buy the prevailing US political perspectives. But Obama's victory is to be celebrated as a sweet moment, even if they expect him to continue pursuing the cause of American imperialism and not fundamentally change very much. African Americans are no longer the largest minority here, having been displaced by Hispanic immigrants (whether legal or not) and their descendants, and Obama, although his skin colour is "black", is a member of the intellectual elite. His victory speech, so parallel in its structure and even its sentiments to Martin Luther King's famous speeches, had me in tears (mind you, I am a big sook and have been known to weep during Telstra commercials telling you to call your family). He speaks so well - such a welcome change after Bush. If I knew more about the incumbents in the Senate, I might have been able to seize upon one sweet symbol like Howard's losing his seat at our elections last year (which we listened to on-line in the middle of the night on our anniversary weekend in Acapulco).




We had dinner at our friends' house and cracked a couple of bottles of champagne when the result was clear and McCain conceded graciously. It was just small party of 6 - nice to be invited rather than listening at home alone. Though we don't have a TV in this house, now we have borrowed a rabbits ears antenna from Janet and Tom next door, so I guess we could have picked up couple of broadcast channels or watched the whole count on-line.


I didn't take my camera so don't have any photos, but I am sure there was lots of coverage of Obama's victory speech in Australia as well. And his victory speech is available on YouTube as well as the New York Times :



Poor Obama - and our own poor Kevin, coming to power in time to inherit the financial mess left by years of deregulation and neglect of infrastructure spending - I guess what goes up must come down, and rightward swings are followed by leftward ones as we regress towards the mean.

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