Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Obama supporters outside the white house

“Obama’s national margin in the popular vote will approach ten million. He has won by the largest margin for a non-incumbent candidate for president since Eisenhower in 1952.

First and foremost, the election outcome is a massive repudiation of the Bush presidency, the Republican Party and nearly three decades of right-wing domination of American politics. It is a watershed election, one which reflects, in the electoral framework, the massive demographic, socio-economic and cultural shifts over the past quarter-century.

All of the right-wing nostrums reiterated by the media and political establishment of both parties in recent years—that America is a “right” or “center-right” nation with a majority of “red states” unshakably loyal to the Republicans, that religion and cultural “values” are the decisive political issues—have been shattered.”

Read the complete article at wsws.org

***

“I truly believe that the example of how Obama has lived his life, what he has learned, his many years of grass roots activism to improve the lives of people, how he has coped with racism and being the “outsider” ….these things connect to the countless layers of American society. Obama speaks to them because he has lived it; and the living-of-it gives him the right to talk about inclusiveness. He personifies hope for a better future for our fractured and hurting country.” 
– Sylvia Alf, 68, Obama volunteer in Florida, as cited on Five Thirty Eight.com

***

Australian Greens leader Senator Bob Brown said in Auckland today: “President-elect Barack Obama raises the hopes of the world for a fairer, securer more ecologically sound future.

“The world’s richest nation is set to enter a new era. Hope for George W. Bush’s replacement will return a greater decency and dignity to the White House. The world faces a rapid countdown to climate change, over consumption and misuse of catastrophic weaponry. Obama’s election is a breath of fresh air after perhaps the most important presidency in a century. His biggest challenge will be to end the undemocratic power wielded by an army of lobbyists and vested interests which is camped in Washington,” Senator Brown said.

***

“The country regarded loftily by many Europeans as hopelessly racist and irredeemably right wing has voted to be ruled by a black man, at the head of a party committed to economic redistribution and a foreign policy rooted in peaceful diplomatic engagement.”

Read the complete article on the UK’s Times Online

There’s a lot to process.  In the meantime, the folks at The Real News Network made this nice video, and fast, too.

Sunset over east coast USA, 11/04/04

Four years ago today I flew over this county. Bush had won again. I looked down on the land passing below me in bitter shock. For some dumb reason I thought reason would prevail in the 2004 election. I thought Americans would look at all the things that had gone wrong, all the impeachables, all the destruction, and go nope, you can’t fool us again. The sun set during my flight, and I watched the darkening land and wondered where the hell I was living. In a bubble, apparently. The liberal, educated bubble of Portland, Oregon. (Or, as dubbed by Bush senior after a particularly unwelcome visit, ‘Little Beirut‘.)

Fall 2004 was one of the busiest times of my life. I was teaching at PNCA, while also trying to work out a way to live life differently from the highly-stressed and underpaid existence of a 4/5ths-time college professor. I was on my way to Baltimore, to present a paper on the Efficacy of Political Art at a conference at MICA. My head was full of those clever anti-Bush videos, ironic Photoshop collages, and witty propaganda posters that were flying round the Internet at the time. We’ll never be able to measure their effect, of course, whether they contributed in some way to a shift in attitude — or maybe they reflected a change in attitude that was waiting in the wings. But they did keep some of us from going insane during those dark days.

Four years later I am looking back on the second anniversary of launching into full self-employment, the first anniversary of running a successful web design studio with collaborator Jimmy Thomas, and a likely Obama landslide. (Which, with my new status as an American, I helped along a little.)  I am now a business owner during a shaky economy.  Blue Mouse Monkey had grown exponentially the year before, and this year with the slowing economy and word of layoffs all around, I am grateful our work remains steady.

Hey, it’s never going to be perfect, but it’s going to be better.