We, the People.
If Barack Obama prevails over John McCain on November 4, an accomplishment that seems increasingly likely as the clock runs down on this presidential campaign season, the real winners of this election will be the American people.
Thanks to a brilliant, charismatic and inspiring candidate who understood that winning this election would require equal parts motivation and organization, the American people have taken the election process back into their own hands. They have registered voters, helped them to the polls, given millions of small contributions, attended fundraisers, watched debates, blogged, commented and brought their "faith," in every meaning of that word, to bear on this election.
On Wednesday night, I worked at the Durham NC Obama field office for a couple of hours before the last debate, making calls to remind voters that One Stop Early Voting started the next day. The place was full of people, most of them sitting at phones trying to hear themselves talk over the din of ten other people making phone calls. The crowd was eclectic. My friend and I could be described as "middle-aged Caucasian women." Both of us are busy professionals with families, but we made time, and not for the first time, to lend a hand to the campaign. At a table near us was an older African American man who, with his easy, "down-home" way of talking, was connecting well with the people he reached on the phone. There was a twenty-something campaign worker at another table, who told us he had put his entire life on hold to work full time getting the vote out until the election was over. On a laptop in the corner sat an African American student from one of the local high schools, inputting data from the calls we were making.
Some conservative commentators have dismissed Obama's supporters by saying they are mostly young or black, as if being either made them a less legitimate part of the electorate. What I saw on Wednesday night was a sea of faces belonging to people of different races, genders and ages. To me, those faces all looked the same - they looked like the faces of America.
If Obama wins (and I believe he will, but I won't stop working for him until it's a done deal) it could take months of political wrangling before he can put any of his promised policies in place and even years before we can measure their effectiveness. Nonetheless, if we wake up on November 5th to find out that Obama has been elected, we - the people who rose to the call to become engaged in the political process for the good of ourselves and our country - will be the real winners of this election.