On the Campaignvertisement

I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America about Obama's broadcast last night:

[R]ealizing that millions upon millions of people, more than I ever would have imagined at the outset of this thing (and how pleased to have been wrong I am) across the nation were concurrently noting his presidentialicious deportment, I considered how genuinely amazing it is that in less than a week, America could have its first-ever African-American president-elect. The enormity of it enveloped me as I watched – and letting myself be overcome with (dare I say it?) hope, felt thrilling and scary and silly and profound at the same time, and most of all reckless.

As I am a progressive, a feminist, and typically a Democratic voter who voted for Bill Clinton just because I hoped to have Al Gore as my president someday (sob), one could say I've become rather adept at managing my political expectations – a self-defence mechanism exacerbated by the grim steeliness required to manage the despondence induced by eight interminably long years of wretched Bushery. The resulting abnegation of unfettered hopefulness has meant that it's really only been in the past couple of weeks I've allowed myself to contemplate the increasingly likely possibility of a President Obama.

Now that the rigid containment of my expectations, in preparation for and fear of yet another Republican administration, starts to slack with the encouragement of enticing polls and the promising echoes of what sounds suspiciously like a death rattle emanating from the McCain campaign's general direction, there emerges a glimmer of Hope.

Read the whole thing.