Congratulations, America! Great news.
Obama’s speech was fantastic, and McCain’s was very dignified.
Unfortunately, there is one piece of bad news: Stephen Fry tweets that California’s Proposition 8 has passed. It outlaws same-sex marriage, and is a nasty, bigoted piece of work. I can’t find any official news on it at the moment, though, so let’s hope that the good Mr Fry is just misinformed, out there in Africa as he is.
Long queues at polling places are a sign, surely, of a country recently freed from tyranny, of one that is experiencing the chance to vote for the first time (I’m thinking of South Africa in 1994, for example). They are not something that you generally expect to see in a mature democracy like the USA.
Let’s hope, then, that the people streaming to the polling stations on America are those desperate to breathe free of Bush and the Neocon hegemony, and not tiny-minded racists trying to drag the country back to the dark ages.
And remember, America: the whole world is watching.
There’s a Warren Zevon song called ‘Worrier King’. It contains the line, ‘I’ve been up all night, worrying what November’s gonna bring.’ Given that US elections are always In that month, there’s little doubt what he was worrying about.
If Warren had lived he’d be worrying now, and I have a shrewd idea in which direction his concerns would be facing. I’m not American, and I’m worrying. Though I can’t deny that my worry is diluted with a lot of hope and excitement.
Tuesday night’s going to be a long one, and whenever I collapse, it won’t be over. But at some point on Wednesday, there’s going to be a new dawn for America, and maybe for the world.
Edited to add: It’s actually ‘wondering what November’s gonna bring’.