Comments from DL staffers below the fold:
nemski: I now know how my father felt when Kennedy was elected. I now know the pain that previous generations have felt through war and tough economic times. I now have a President who will lead, but asks of me and my neighbors to get involved and make this nation great again.
pandora: I am so proud of my country and its ability to reinvent itself. Once again we are leading, we are proving to the naysayers of the world that we are a nation of possible dreams. Today we are at our best.
cassandra_m: Believe the Hype. Not the Obama hype, because that doesn’t matter, but the America hype — a country who responded to a man who reminded us all that our own history calls us to be better than the petty and selfish politics of the last 20 or so years. Who reminded us that the people who built this country are in crisis, and as long as they are in crisis, we can never fulfill our potential. Who reminded us that we are always more powerful when we come together as community. American possibilities are back, even though we have a lot of work to do to clear the table to get to those possibilities. He won’t be perfect and he won’t do everything I’d like, but I do know that he will be deadly serious about managing the United States of America. We’ve gotten our country back, and I’m proud of all of us who fought to get us here.
Delaware Dem: Clinton was my Kennedy. He inspired me. But that inspiration was short lived (like Kennedy’s presidency) and disappointment shortly followed. No, President Obama is my FDR. I do believe he will fundamentally change this country like FDR did. Could he disappoint? Sure, and he probably will. He will undoubtedly make mistakes. But one thing is for certain. We again have a cautious, patient, practical and intelligent leader again. The wonderous thing about Obama’s election and inauguration is that it proves true the addage that, when faced with tremendous challenges, America always chooses the leader for its times. And that is a relief, since we are saying goodbye to a President so ill suited, in temperament, intellect and ideology, for the times that he nearly destroyed this country. It falls on President Obama and all of us to rebuild America. We can do it. We’ve done it before.
LiberalGeek: Almost a year ago, I stood in the cold for hours to catch a few minutes of listening to Barack Obama on Rodney Square. My family and I had become seperated and I ended up finding a sightline that let me see Obama from quite a distance. In front of me were an African American woman and her 10 year old granddaughter. The little girl was too short to see anything, but her Granddaughter wanted to bring her out to see a dream. A dream that she had had for decades. A dream that seemed impossible in her lifetime. It was still far from a done deal on that day, but no Africa American before had seemed to have a legitimate shot at the Presidency like this. He had vision, where many before had none.
I lifted that young lady (and she wasn’t light) and gave her a view of Barack Obama for a good portion of that speech until my arms gave out. I was happy to give that girl a chance to see a little piece of history and to help her grandmother show her granddaughter the promise of America. Today, that is a promise kept.
Donviti: I’m not sure if people realize that this guy is black. How long ago where the riots in Wilmington? How long ago was MLK MURDERED? We had a black man lynched this decade. We had Katrina illustrate just how oppressed not only the poor are, but black people and minorities in general are. In one fell swoop, a single party that used fear and racism, which was full of out right racists, a party full of oppressive white people, that wanted to win at all costs; that party has been defeated and the sins of a nation are washed away.
I pray and hope that “Change” really will happen. I don’t hold much hope though. The rich and powerful need more and they want to keep what they got illegally, immorally and unethically. They have had their way with lady Liberty and aren’t going to let her go without a fight. We fight their wars, we pay their salaries and our tax dollars support their mistakes. Yet, I still hold hope. I hold hope that something will change simply because it has to.
You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime and this country won’t change course easily either. Hopefully, Obama will continue to signal to the people that have been held back, held down and been cast aside as hopeless and helpless that miracles do happen and that this country is the best FUCKING country ever. I’m proud to be an American today and even prouder that the majority of people in this country got a say in what happens to them.
Obama means America to me and today I can dream that America will change for the better after 8 years of hell and ruin and out right defiance of the will of the majority.
X Stryker: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
On the night of Election Day, 2006, with great satisfaction I went to sleep knowing that the victories we’d achieved would not be complete until we took back the White House. As I drifted off, I wondered who our next president would be. I woke that morning with an answer – Barack Obama. Had it come to me in a dream? A vision? Or had my mind simply worked it out while unburdened by the distractions of the waking world? Whatever it was, be it divine, psychic, or mere chance, I woke with great clarity and renewed sense of purpose.
And today, we all wake as I did that day, in a world where the old conventional wisdom has been thrown out the window; a changed world where the old notions of the limitations of our achievements have been demolished. This is a day many millions of Americans never thought possible.
And so we wake from the long national nightmare of the Blunderer-in-Chief, the Unitary Executive, that useless, useless man who has brought us to the terrible precipice before us. At long last, the hour of renewal has arrived. Thank God, and as Obama said minutes ago, “we are ready to lead once more.”