November 4, 2008 The crowd was exuberant yet very civil and peaceful. I only came across one person on a street corner preaching hell and damnation to the sinners who voted for Obama, but everybody was extremely tolerant about it. (Though I was tempted to turn back and say to him, "Seriously, dude. God Bless You.") The weather was not only good for November (dubious praise, usually) it was so good it could have given a June evening a run for its money.
I didn't have a ticket to the main stage and wasn't very close, but it was definitely a remarkably different experience from watching it on TV. Obama's a phenomenally gifted orator, no doubt, but even from where I was…well, on TV you get the sense of when he kicks it up a notch, but there's something very special about being in proximity, where you can hear the live feed reverberating all around you. Dude can turn it ON and make crystal ring with that voice. Which of course means nothing without the words and sincerity behind it, but I feel he's got that too. It just was very moving. When he took the stage at 11 p.m. it wasn't even like cheering; it was just an absolute wall of sound. Add to that all the people laughing and crying and hugging one another, and it was really something to see and experience.
Afterwards, as the streets flooded with people leaving the park, there was this roar from the crowd from blocks away that would build and crash through the canyons of the buildings, and the cheering would just rush toward you and wash over, then carry on down the street into the next blocks. It was like people doing the wave in stadiums, except this was an audio wave. It caught up to me a few times. Really spectacular.
Anyway. I don't think Obama can fix everything, and what little he can do will take a long time. I'm not starry-eyed about that. But we have been sorely abused as a country and I'm ready for a president to say "Pull together. Work together. Volunteer.", versus promoting secrecy and fear, base jingoism, and that to "Go shopping!" is one of the greatest patriotic duties we can perform.
