I wish I could be so jubilant. I was pleasantly surprised to see the voter turn out we had, it was great to see so many really care. Although I am very excited to see our country has moved to the point they will consider a woman, black or whatever for office I still see a nation that remains divided. The popular vote was, at least what I last I saw 6 million apart with Obama at 52% of the popular vote. That leaves some 48% who don’t see him as their chosen leader and that is unsettling for me.

The real task ahead is to remove that division as until we are all on the same page with what needs to be done or we won’t move forward the way we need to. I hope Obama is the one to bring about that unity because we don’t need the divisions we have looked at for the last several years.

Oh Fraz, you buzzkiller. Lemme have one day to bask in this historic occasion and its potential for better tomorrows! :)

Seriously, I agree that regarding the long view, hindsight might show us that getting Obama elected was far easier than getting the country unified and back on track, but I wouldn’t be too distressed by the fact that he didn’t haul in some incredible percentage of the popular vote. The fact that he got an actual majority in so divisive an election and divided a nation is being lauded as an achievement in itself.

So enjoy the moment, even if only for a moment.

I’m enjoying it very much. I’m surprisingly emotional about it, though after the year I’ve had, it’s not hard to bring me to tears, for good or bad things. But I woke up and took a deep breath and let it out and smiled. Now the real work begins.

That is Awesome man. Keep flying it.
Now the real work begins.

Please Will don’t misunderstand. I truly have felt that this country for a long time has been ready for a black or woman to step up and be elected. I am very happy to see him illustrate how far we have come as a nation to look at the person and what they can do and not what/where they came from. I can rejoice in that.

A lot of my melancholy this morning comes from the loss on 8. That saddens me deeply as it illustrates those divisions and how much further we have to grow as a nation in accepting people for who they are, not what they are. Sorry to be the damper but that is the part I think has kept me from doing cartwheels over the other success we saw this election.

I hear ya Fraz… In fact I cropped the photo at the bottom to not include the sub headline referencing Prop 8′s “early lead” because it bums me out, too.

I’m the aftermath of its passage, I’m going to take hope in it ultimately being ruled unconsitutional, especially given the state supreme court’s overturning of the same-sex marriage ban last May.

From the Times article on it: “In his opinion, Chief Justice Ronald M. George, declared that any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will from this point on be constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate by race or gender, making the state’s high court the first in the nation to adopt such a stringent standard.

I never thought of Obama as black, or that this election was about some social experiment to see how far America has come. Obama is bi-racial. He is as white as he is black. Although the MSM is focusing on the black aspect, I can be just as proud of Obama for being white as a black person can be for his being black.

I think most voters (and 6 million is a rather large number) went for Obama because just about every single thing under Bush has gone sour unless you own an oil company, and voters felt that Obama had the best plans to solve our problems and the best judgment and temperament to implement those plans. Maybe most importantly, most voters hopefully want the country to be united, and realize that it’s the only way to solve our big problems. Hate is going to be very expensive for the next couple of years.

[...] on the topic of Prop 8.  The results were the biggest disappointment of this election for me.  Will.i.am and Sean Bonner have both posted on the overall election.  Gloria Allred is taking up the cause on [...]

Though I am tempted, I’m waiting until 1.20.09 to fly mine.

And, darn you LA Times for blundering the historic headline by placing the Prop 8 headline above the fold. Unlike the major papers around the nation, I’m doubting anyone was lining up on Spring street to buy theirs…