Excuse the incoherence, please — I didn’t start crying until just now. OK, I’ve stopped. We have just elected a black man to be President of the United States. And we did not elect him because of the color of his skin, we elected him because of the content of his character. Imagine what Dr. King would say today.

This night was not the happiest of my life — I don’t even feel anything right now. But it was by far the most amazing. Without a doubt, the most fascinating. The raw emotion of this night was a sight to behold, a frustration of eight years vented over the course of several hours.

The first big euphoric rise came at around 9:00 I’m guessing, when CNN called Pennsylvania. The next biggie was Ohio around a half hour later, when I nearly lost my voice for a few minutes. At this point, the race was pretty much over. Would there be any emotion left when 270 became 270, I wondered.

At 10:58, the 500 or so of us in the Continental Ballroom rose up and roared in unison as CNN called Virginia. This was especially meaningful, I’m sure, to all of you College Democrats who worked your asses off in Virginia this fall for Barack. And then came the realization that in less than two minutes, California, Washington, and Oregon would have their polls close and likely be called for Obama. The cheers steadily rose as 11:00 approached. Five seconds before CNN even displayed the graphic that Obama was our new president, people began celebrating what they knew was coming. Jumping and screaming at a volume that would normally have really irritated me didn’t faze me at all. Hugging and crying and disbelief.

And that was only the first part of the night. What does a GW student do after a presidential election? Go to the White House, of course! The five-block walk from the Marvin Center to the executive mansion was non-stop honking and yelping, and it only intensified as we got closer to the intersection of 16th and Penn. A crowd of thousands of students was already on hand, and many more were coming down Pennsylvania to join them. Some were sober, some not. A couple were wearing Obama Halloween masks. A few lit up victory cigars. Chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” and “Yes we did! Yes we did!” rang out. A conga line ripped past me as they all chanted “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” An off-key rendition of God Bless America started, and I joined — equally off-key, to be sure.

As I started to make my way through the crowds to head back, I bumped into probably the only person there over 25 — this man was well past 25 — and almost instantly recognized him as Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of my lifeblood, The New Republic. His presence surprised me given, how reluctant his support for Senator Obama was. (In May, I overheard him say that he feared Obama would be “another Jimmy Carter.”) But I guess even curmudgeons are not immune to revelry.

A small part of me feels sorry for John McCain. He once was a noble and independent man, and maybe now he can be again. I feel like we saw the old McCain in his very gracious concession speech tonight. I see I’m not the only one to think so. We can use his help in the Senate for the hard part of this ordeal — governing!

Tags: Barack Obama

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