Nowadays, in those rare moments I find to fire up my computer for non-work reasons, I feel the urge to reach outward, towards the internet, especially election news, rather than inward, towards the much-neglected inner life of Jodi. I guess there’s a time and place for everything.
I am excited, sometimes even buoyant, yet agitated as each day sustains the good news about Obama’s place in the polls. I remember saying a few months ago that as hard as it was to be optimistic given the nastiness out there, the bitter defeats, and my deep knowledge that “power concedes nothing without a struggle” (to quote Frederick Douglass), I felt like this Obama campaign had a feeling of inevitability about it.
And it still does. It is a beautiful thing to watch rise. I’m reminded of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise” as Obama moves forward with the grace of a swan, the hidden movements of webbed feet pushing underwater, the dark water obscuring but simultaneously representing the repressed weight of history. Under that water is a history of oppression, our ugly history of racism, but also our history of progressivism, of people coming together to make things better, to define a broader “us.” All this is articulated by Obama in flawlessly careful and unthreatening tones, persistent, promising cadence, with the unruffled poise of the swan. We are listening hard and watching intently.
Under the water, the hopes are stirring. Quietly, we are reassured that even as he reaches towards the murky “center” of American politics, he is preparing to take care of us, the ones who care about social justice more than our taxes, even as he brings a larger group of people into that conversation, back into those hopes and visions of Americans as citizens, not just consumers. He reminds us that we can dream, that we don’t have to sit huddled in our houses, afraid of our neighbors, fearing enemies everywhere.
I sometimes think about this election as the teeter totter on which our declining empire sits. I try to quell my emotionalism about the whole drama by stepping back as the trained historian that I am. I think: either our democracy will be revived, our declining empire, our waning time in the sun of history will breathe fresh air and invite the idealism and hope of another generation, here and abroad, or…it won’t. In my view, either we’ll vote hope: Obama, or we’ll vote fear: McCain. If Obama loses, progressives will need to look harder to see the rise of other people’s ideals, perhaps of the next nation, or group of nations who will offer the world a hopeful vision, who will produce leaders that inspire the world’s next transformation. If that happens, it will be the end of an era in my own intellectual and political life, the end of a certain form of patriotism I sometimes forgot I had, but perhaps the beginning of a new perspective as a citizen of the world.
My 16-year-old daughter also helps me nourish some perspective, she who has spent one night every week for the past month or so volunteering at the Democratic headquarters in our town, calling total strangers, learning to speak up, speak out, listen, and build connections between her generation and the older ones. She’s optimistic Obama will win. But I’m also encouraged by our conversations about what might happen if he doesn’t. I try to encourage her with the knowledge that her environmental commitments and human rights causes can still be taken up; it’s a big world out there. “I know,” she says, and she smiles. And I believe she does know.
Yet now, it appears possible that the candidate who has inspired me more than any other in my lifetime might actually win! It’s not just as a citizen (of the nation and the world) that I would rejoice in that victory, but also as a mother. It’s been wonderful to re-discover my idealism about politics with my kids, to have faith in someone to lead us again, to be able to point to Barack Obama over and over again, even in the midst of the pandering, late-season election shenanigans, and say, there’s a good man. I can say honestly that I think he is an amazing man, someone who will bring out the best in anyone who will listen, someone who will help make us as a people who share this particular geographic space and political boundary the best we can be, at least for a while. I hope his continuing story will continue to be part of our story, for me and my family, for the students I teach, for the history books yet to be written. I hope and hope, do what I can to push it forward, and like so many others, wait and wait for that November day.
