Obamarama

Four years ago, Chapel Hill seemed like a morgue; people wandered around the city and campus with their heads down, wondering just how the country could have chosen four more years of Bush. Today, like almost everywhere in the country, there’s a feeling of elation in the air.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it - spontaneous outbreaks of joy spilling out in the towns and cities across the nation. It’s like the Americans were greeting themselves as liberators, hugging random strangers and going to the White House to celebrate the result.

When the West Coast closed last night, when it was finally called, it really did feel like a new beginning. That for all the country’s faults, this is the only Western nation on the planet that would elect a black man from a single parent family. A man that took on the two great political machines of the past two decades and beat them both.

Obama will disappoint us, almost certainly. There’s so muchhope invested in him right now, but there’s a limited amount a President can do, and the success of things like Prop 8 in California show that there’s still some ways to go. In addition, despite what Melanie Philips and her ilk would have you believe, Obama is a pragmatic centre-left politician. I’m bit expecting him to revive The Fairness Doctrine any time soon, for example (and in addition, I hope he doesn’t even think about it, as it’s a pretty bad idea).

Bit that’s all in the future. For now, I’m wandering the streets of Durham and Chapel Hill hearing people talking about President-Elect Obama with a pride I haven’t seen for years. As we said last night, “Yes We Did”.