Nothing Like the Sun

The libertarian habit of seeming to claim a monopoly on "reason" or "rationality" can be irritating. But one supposes that heightened self-confidence represents a sort of prerequisite for playing on that team ...

Be sure to raise a glass sometime today (if you may safely do so ...) to the 1933 ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Prohibition.

Video of Tuesday night's celebrations in Seattle (all over the world, for that matter) is already up on YouTube and lots of other places. But even though it's a few days late, I just have to post a few of these--some of the best footage of that night's celebrations in Seattle was recorded in my neighborhood, on the block of Broadway between Pike and Pine Streets. Just in case you've seen them before and are over it already, though, I've placed the footage behind an LJ cut, below.

( Capitol Hill Hipsters Break Out into National Anthem, Dance Night Away--Click Here for Video )How many kinds of awesome is that?

I want a T-shirt that says that.

Tonight, I sat down at the Showbox in downtown Seattle with Randall, the friend who took me to see Obama speak for the first time just over two years ago, and Tiffany and Barb, with whom I canvassed for Obama earlier this year, and we watched a thing we'd devoutly wished for but still somehow couldn't believe, actually take place. We saw a skinny black guy with an exotic name win over states in the Old Confederacy. We saw him outperform the Southern white males who were our last two Democratic presidents. (Tonight was truly the Night They Drove Old Dixie Down ...) We watched a cool, thoughtful, eloquent politician emerge unscathed--in fact, arguably stronger--from a swamp of rumor and fearmongering. We saw Southern Strategies and wedge issue campaigns and swift boat attacks flounder and fail. We saw the familiar lines between red and blue states collapse. We watched Barack Obama win the presidency. I can't remember when I've ever felt prouder of my country.

Afterward, my friend Nicole and I walked through downtown surrounded by ecstatic people, screaming, shouting, high-fiving, jumping, marching, honking car horns. A little later, heading up Capitol Hill, I waded through throngs of revelers crowding the middle of Pike Street, which momentarily seemed as thick with human bodies as during the WTO protests of nine years ago or the immigration marches just a couple of years back, but this time not angry or defiant--just overjoyed. Somewhere along the way, a woman stood by the roadside holding a sparkler, looking for all the world like some kind of goth Statue of Liberty.

Now, outside my window, I can hear the celebrations still going on. No doubt about it, this is one deliriously happy city, tonight. And one that feels closer to the rest of the country than it has in a long, long while.

I have pictures. I probably even have more intelligent things to say about all of this. But it's late, and I'm already drifting off. So I'll post that stuff later, maybe tomorrow.

But, man, I have to say that waking up tomorrow is going to feel better than waking up any day has for the past eight years.

If you haven't already turned in an absentee or trekked to one of the early voting sites, get yourself out there and VOTE, Tuesday! Make yourself some history.

Also: King County, WA voters with questions about what to do tomorrow can find plenty of answers here.

At an event in Des Moines, today, John McCain blamed Barack Obama for injecting "unnecessary partisanship" into the current financial crisis.

He then added: "Now is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to fix the problem."

After work last Thursday, I headed down to J&M’s Cafe & Cardroom in Seattle's Pioneer Square observe and interview people watching John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. The event was a convention-watching party organized by Peter Cowman of MoveRed.org, a King-County-based G.O.P. youth group. While folks at the bar were watching the Giants-Redskins game, about thirty-two others gathered at the tables in the back, where Fox News’ convention coverage ran continuously on four big flatscreen TVs. I counted 20 men and 12 women sitting sitting at the tables, I’d say ranging in age from twenty to fifty, all of them white, most of them conservative Republicans. Steve Beren, the G.O.P.’s 7th district congressional candidate, handed out campaign flyers. One independent sat sipping his beer in a corner. All of them were there to hear what McCain had to say.

Most of you reading this probably know me well enough to ask what in the hell I was doing there. The answer is, as I said, to observe and interview: I’d signed up to cover the event for OffTheBus, the Huffington Posts’s “citizen (i.e., volunteer) journalist” blogging site. This was my first OTB “assignment.” An extremely truncated summary of what I heard there can be found at the site. My full account is below:

Arriving about an hour before McCain was scheduled to speak, I managed to interview twelve convention-watchers about what they considered the most important issues in this campaign, what they thought of McCain and of Sarah Palin, and how they felt the race was going. After the speech, I asked the same people for their reactions, in particular whether McCain’s words or performance changed anything for them. Everyone I interviewed spoke for attribution.

( Your correspondent visits a little red island in Seattle's deep blue sea )

X-posted to ljdemocrats

Bill Clinton: "Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."

I got a lot out of Ryan Lizza's article, "Making It," in the current New Yorker. Lizza provides a copiously-sourced account of Obama's political coming-of-age in Chicago, a subject the candidate has generally avoided in his two published memoirs. Lizza's account corrects a lot of misconceptions about Obama held by both supporters and detractors: Lizza's Obama is neither a revolutionary nor a naif, but probably no more ruthless than his political peers (certainly in Chicago ...). Lizza argues that what's gotten Obama this far politically is a pragmatic approach to coalition-building and an organizational and rhetorical style that he honed in the Chicago of the 1990s and early 2000s:

( Misconceptions, paradoxes )

At one point, Lizza asks a disgruntled former Obama ally from Chicago whether the candidate's shifting alliances and maneuverings were simply inevitable parts of his rapid rise from liberal state senator from Hyde Park to viable presidential candidate. “'Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?' she said. 'Is that the question?' She stared at me and grimaced. 'I’m going to pass on that.'”

Thee article's worth reading in its entirety, notwithstanding the snarky magazine cover ...

X-Posted to ljdemocrats

As planned, I went down to Oregon last weekend to scrounge up a few more primary votes for Barack Obama. I caught a ride there on Friday with a coworker and her friend, who'd been recruited for the same purpose.
( My Working Vacation )