I’d just got home on Thursday evening and gone to bed when I heard the TV on in the sitting room. J was watching Obama’s Iowa victory speech live. I rushed out to join him. Politics is suddenly alive again. In some ways the speech reminded me how bad things have got, because the hope he expresses seems almost unreal. But it’s there sure enough. It’s been kindled, and is now spurring to catch on throughout the country. Yes the power-per-se politics of cynicism and point scoring will try to douse the flames but I’ve got a feeling that now more than ever people here are ready for change. The crucial thing over the next few months will be for people to believe. Still you hear everywhere comments like “I can’t see it happening”, "America's not ready to vote for a black man", and people doubting whether they should vote for him for fear that not enough others will, hence opening the door to another Republican administration. It’s precisely those doubts which could jepoardise this unique opportunity. If all those doubters believe in the America they want to see rather than the America they see now, things will change. As Obama said in Iowa, his victory was an affirmation of the “most American of ideas – that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
I’ve just moved here and of course can't vote but the sense of possibility is electrifying: I want to be in the thick of it, be part of it in whatever way I can.
This 31 December New York Times editorial – and the mass of letters it inspired – sums up the damage that’s been done to America in the past few years and the battering that belief has taken. And this opinion piece by Bob Herbert four days later captures the smiling relief that of course change is possible: it's all of our responsibilities to make it happen.
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