Yes We Can!

The crowd goes wild as Obama walks out to accept the presidency. What can I say, we did it! I spent the three days leading up the election walking precincts for the Obama campaign in Las Vegas. I have teared-up so many times over the last few days. To join to the choir, America, I am so proud of us. Thank you to all of you have worked on the campaign and supported us. On Monday evening after walking precincts I was challenged/accosted by a drunk guy in the casino/hotel elevator. Not that he wanted to hear my answer, but he asked me for one accomplishment of Obama that qualified him to be president. To answer, I think the most stunning accomplishment is the implementation of bottom-up and top-down organization. If he runs the country the way he ran the campaign we will live in a better place. It is funny, many fiscal conservatives think that the government should be run like a business (those parts that should be around at all). There is a Quest commercial bragging (in a non-political way) about how they built a communications network for the RNC in two months. The Obama campaign organization dwarfs that. I heard that the campaign had 8 million volunteers, that is 2% of the population working for the campaign. There were 24,000 volunteers canvassing in Ohio. The Republicans dissed community organizing, but it kicked their ass. I don't expect the Obama administration to fix everything, but I certainly have hope that we are headed in the right direction.

The most rewarding aspect of the trip, is that I feel I made a difference. Towards the end of election day, I was waiting by the car after canvassing my neighborhood for the third time and a group of teenagers drove up and asked for Obama buttons and a kid on bike came by a little while later. As I was waiting for the rest of my team to reassemble, a guy driving by saw me and pulled over to ask where his polling place was located. I told him the location and handed him a door hanger with directions. As he drove away he said Obama is going to win. A few seconds later, a woman driving by saw me and started cheering. It made me tear-up to see our nation taking the election so seriously. As we drove home we were listening to the local NPR station which was talking about incredible ground presence of the Obama campaign, just out walking their dogs or driving around people new we were there.

Finally, the morning after the election I shared a cab back to the airport with a couple of other volunteers, an undergrad from Berkeley and a middle-aged mother from Idaho. We were ebullient. When we got to the airport, the woman from Idaho said she was so proud of our generation and insisted on covering our cab-fare. On the plane, I was seated towards the back, so I had a view up the aisle and I could see many people were watching CNN. As CNN analyzed the results, they went to Nevada and showed a county-by-county view which showed a red state with two blue counties containing Reno and Las Vegas. The pundit explained that Las Vegas pulled the state blue. I clapped a little bit to myself and the next thing I new the plane erupted into applause. This is the America I want to live in.

Yes we can!