election
Last night in Chapel Hill, there was an air of festivity. At the Station in Carrboro, people stood mashed up against each other, no room to move. We waited at the door at first, and from the depths of the crowd came a yell—ohio had just gone blue. I figured Station was a happening place, being a sort-of new bar and being in Carrboro on election night.
But we went to Top of the Hill and it was crowded, too and people were paying more rapt attention to CNN than those at Station. The whole thing felt like watching the Heels in a national championship game.
We all felt pretty sure there was a win for us coming, but no one got so cocky that they didn’t boo when states went to McCain. And I was confident but for a moment there, when all the red state results started rolling in—Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi—all in a row and McCain’s electoral votes started piling up and he started closing the gap just a little and North Carolina was 50-50 at one point--during all of that, I remembered 2004, when we gathered in Kevin and Ryan's dorm room in old West and hoped against hope that there would be a fourth quarter comeback, but went home sullen and defeated.
It felt strange-literally inconceivable—that our guy was going to win this thing. Most of us were born in the 80s when Reagan and the moral majority were having their moment in the sun, and that was followed by Bush, and that was followed by Clinton, a brief bright spot we were too young to really follow, and then we all came of political age during the outrageous era of GW Bush. We had to dutifully cast our first votes for Kerry, a wooden candidate whowas okay, but his main attraction was that he wasn't Bush. So this-—the excitement, the wholehearted belief in a candidate’s ability to win the election and to govern soundly—this was wholly new and we kept turning to each other, wide-eyed, still not daring to believe.
With seconds left until the west coast polls closed, a New year’s eve, the ball-is-dropping count went up from the crowd, THREE TWO ONE cnn called it for Obama and in one corner of the bar, folks broke into “YES WE CAN” chants, and across the bar I could see a Young Democrat rubbing his face in relief, there was a visible release of anxiety and a flood of “oh my good we made it” swept over him, and next to him, a girl stared unblinking at the results on the television with her hand locked over her open mouth. Lorelle teared up. It was only a matter of minutes before the crowd at Top O’ started flooding down the stairs, pushing towards Franklin St.
It started as less than a hundred people, huddled on the corner of Franklin and Columbia, but every few minutes, new people would arrive, breathless from running, in twos and threes and groups of six or eight. Everyone pushed into the middle of the street and cars drove by blasting their horns, boys hanging out of the windows yelling and waving, and this incited the crowd in the street to a louder roar. Hands were waving in the air. People high fived.
The police arrived and corralled everyone back onto the sidewalk, but whenever the traffic lights turned red, the revelers would dash madly into the crosswalk from both sides of the street and meet in the middle, jumping and yelling and cheering “yes we did” “Obama” and, a few times, “USA”
Within minutes of forming, that first most overjoyed group started singing the national anthem. I heard it twice in less than half an hour. Someone lit sparklers and handed them out. It was raining. A group of over 100 people spontaneously danced the electric slide in the middle of the intersection when the cops had finally closed off the road. And they started a new chant, “O-b-a-m-a!” and “O! Bama!” and all of us out there formed a giant O, holding hands, squished around corners of the buildings, cheering and radiant like the Whos from Whoville on that Christmas morning. And then people broke away and everyone ran screaming to the center so the circle collapsed in on itself.
I had never seen or felt anything like that. I had never seen or felt so much genuine patriotism in myself and in my peers, such camaraderie and warmth, not because of school spirit but because of real, tangible change that we’d all helped to bring. I couldn’t think of any other election in my (admittedly short so far) life where this kind of celebration would have broken out. I mostly stood still just to watch and bask in the victory, in the palpable, genuine inspiration that had moved everyone to rush Franklin st.
Pundits have long called the youth vote unreliable, they’ve called us unpredictable and apathetic, but here we were being wild in the streets, not because our basketball team had defeated Duke, but because of a presidential election.
I felt really at home with everyone, genuinely glad to be there. It felt good to lay down our weapons-cynicism and sarcasm and all that—and just be earnest and sincerely proud of ourselves.
I guess I stayed out there for over an hour, watching it all, and then I drove home and fell asleep, so I haven’t listened to the coverage or seen the latest numbers, but I did hear that an “impromptu block party” had broken out on the lawn of the White House and in the streets of NYC last night. So we weren’t the only ones.
Obama didn't just squeak by. He got a real-ass victory, a "mandate," if you will. People are ready.
Maybe it's lame to be earnest and genuine and actually feel anything resembling a love of country. It has seemed lame to me. But my prediction was that if we elected a president who we could be proud of, then all of us gay-loving, abortion-having, real-america-hating east coast liberal elite hipster assholes would have to start going to fourth of july parades. and not in a "yeah, my dumb mom is making me go" way, but in a "woo! USA!" way. and sure enough, minutes after the election was called, what did I hear? Un-ironic renditions of the national anthem and enthusiastic chanting of "usa! usa!" the zeitgeist, man. it's changin'.
Also, let's all just participate and have fun and be lame, just this once. It's a chance we won't get for a long time after Obama, probably. I am not going to complain about how messed up and ineffective the two party system is, or how Obama probably won't change much, etc etc. At least not right now.
Last night in Chapel Hill, there was an air of festivity. At the Station in Carrboro, people stood mashed up against each other, no room to move. We waited at the door at first, and from the depths of the crowd came a yell—ohio had just gone blue. I figured Station was a happening place, being a sort-of new bar and being in Carrboro on election night.
But we went to Top of the Hill and it was crowded, too and people were paying more rapt attention to CNN than those at Station. The whole thing felt like watching the Heels in a national championship game.
We all felt pretty sure there was a win for us coming, but no one got so cocky that they didn’t boo when states went to McCain. And I was confident but for a moment there, when all the red state results started rolling in—Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi—all in a row and McCain’s electoral votes started piling up and he started closing the gap just a little and North Carolina was 50-50 at one point--during all of that, I remembered 2004, when we gathered in Kevin and Ryan's dorm room in old West and hoped against hope that there would be a fourth quarter comeback, but went home sullen and defeated.
It felt strange-literally inconceivable—that our guy was going to win this thing. Most of us were born in the 80s when Reagan and the moral majority were having their moment in the sun, and that was followed by Bush, and that was followed by Clinton, a brief bright spot we were too young to really follow, and then we all came of political age during the outrageous era of GW Bush. We had to dutifully cast our first votes for Kerry, a wooden candidate whowas okay, but his main attraction was that he wasn't Bush. So this-—the excitement, the wholehearted belief in a candidate’s ability to win the election and to govern soundly—this was wholly new and we kept turning to each other, wide-eyed, still not daring to believe.
With seconds left until the west coast polls closed, a New year’s eve, the ball-is-dropping count went up from the crowd, THREE TWO ONE cnn called it for Obama and in one corner of the bar, folks broke into “YES WE CAN” chants, and across the bar I could see a Young Democrat rubbing his face in relief, there was a visible release of anxiety and a flood of “oh my good we made it” swept over him, and next to him, a girl stared unblinking at the results on the television with her hand locked over her open mouth. Lorelle teared up. It was only a matter of minutes before the crowd at Top O’ started flooding down the stairs, pushing towards Franklin St.
It started as less than a hundred people, huddled on the corner of Franklin and Columbia, but every few minutes, new people would arrive, breathless from running, in twos and threes and groups of six or eight. Everyone pushed into the middle of the street and cars drove by blasting their horns, boys hanging out of the windows yelling and waving, and this incited the crowd in the street to a louder roar. Hands were waving in the air. People high fived.
The police arrived and corralled everyone back onto the sidewalk, but whenever the traffic lights turned red, the revelers would dash madly into the crosswalk from both sides of the street and meet in the middle, jumping and yelling and cheering “yes we did” “Obama” and, a few times, “USA”
Within minutes of forming, that first most overjoyed group started singing the national anthem. I heard it twice in less than half an hour. Someone lit sparklers and handed them out. It was raining. A group of over 100 people spontaneously danced the electric slide in the middle of the intersection when the cops had finally closed off the road. And they started a new chant, “O-b-a-m-a!” and “O! Bama!” and all of us out there formed a giant O, holding hands, squished around corners of the buildings, cheering and radiant like the Whos from Whoville on that Christmas morning. And then people broke away and everyone ran screaming to the center so the circle collapsed in on itself.
I had never seen or felt anything like that. I had never seen or felt so much genuine patriotism in myself and in my peers, such camaraderie and warmth, not because of school spirit but because of real, tangible change that we’d all helped to bring. I couldn’t think of any other election in my (admittedly short so far) life where this kind of celebration would have broken out. I mostly stood still just to watch and bask in the victory, in the palpable, genuine inspiration that had moved everyone to rush Franklin st.
Pundits have long called the youth vote unreliable, they’ve called us unpredictable and apathetic, but here we were being wild in the streets, not because our basketball team had defeated Duke, but because of a presidential election.
I felt really at home with everyone, genuinely glad to be there. It felt good to lay down our weapons-cynicism and sarcasm and all that—and just be earnest and sincerely proud of ourselves.
I guess I stayed out there for over an hour, watching it all, and then I drove home and fell asleep, so I haven’t listened to the coverage or seen the latest numbers, but I did hear that an “impromptu block party” had broken out on the lawn of the White House and in the streets of NYC last night. So we weren’t the only ones.
Obama didn't just squeak by. He got a real-ass victory, a "mandate," if you will. People are ready.
Maybe it's lame to be earnest and genuine and actually feel anything resembling a love of country. It has seemed lame to me. But my prediction was that if we elected a president who we could be proud of, then all of us gay-loving, abortion-having, real-america-hating east coast liberal elite hipster assholes would have to start going to fourth of july parades. and not in a "yeah, my dumb mom is making me go" way, but in a "woo! USA!" way. and sure enough, minutes after the election was called, what did I hear? Un-ironic renditions of the national anthem and enthusiastic chanting of "usa! usa!" the zeitgeist, man. it's changin'.
Also, let's all just participate and have fun and be lame, just this once. It's a chance we won't get for a long time after Obama, probably. I am not going to complain about how messed up and ineffective the two party system is, or how Obama probably won't change much, etc etc. At least not right now.
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