President-Elect Barack Obama. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
And I gotta say, McCain’s concession speech was pretty nice. Too bad it was marred by dickwads booing Obama’s name and shouting… stuff I couldn’t quite catch (probably just as well). McCain tried to shush them, but let’s face it, it’s too little too late. You ran your campaign on hate and paranoia and lies, you withered old gnome, and tried to foist a useless piece of fundie eye candy as VP just to energise your base, you don’t get to take the moral high ground now.
In contrast with the lily-white faces in McCain’s audience, the crowd listening to Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago ran the full spectrum of skin tones, young and old (a lot of young people, actually); I saw at least one rainbow flag. That’s what the future looks like: people for whom race, gender and sexuality are just not that big a deal. It boggles the mind that this is the same America that voted for Bush twice (and before that, for the elder Bush, and Reagan), but I guess Leonard Cohen was right when he called America “The cradle of the best and of the worst”. Let’s hope this really marks a turning point in the nation’s history. But I couldn’t think of a better President to usher in this new age.