From Iowa to Inauguration (Vol. 5): A Retrospective on the Precariousness of Primary Politics

This post is the fifth in a week-long series. In an effort to remind people of the absurdity that dictates who makes the most important decisions on planet earth, this week I am publishing my private emails from the time I spent in Iowa last winter while making a video about the caucus process. I went as a concerned citizen who felt marginalized by the process looking for answers. What I discovered was quite complicated: a struggle to preserve grassroots political discourse in a humongous nation versus an inherently exclusive and precarious system. Please enjoy my stories from the road, where antics and adventure were certainly abound for my posse of newly-mobilized millennials. You can read previous posts here, here, here and here.

****************

DISPATCH FROM IOWA (Vol. 5) January 4, 2008

There's no opening sentence that can do justice to what we experienced tonight.

The girls, Brett and I were about 5 feet away from the senator when he gave his historic speech. At the end, we shook his hand. Megan took AMAZING pictures of him at very close range. The very thought that the whole world was watching this moment, and I was standing in the thick of it, still hasn't registered. We were swarmed by photographers and reporters. We all felt numb, and Megan's hands were shaking. We all crashed in a puddle on the floor of the convention center after it was over. We'd been filming all day and we were exhausted.

The scene was joyous. The crowd was chanting, one segment tried to start an "O" wave around the auditorium. A high school band played the drums and people danced. Tears streamed down my face, particularly in the part when he spoke passionately about what the philosophy of "hope" means to him.

I'm still in a daze. I thought it would be more of an out-of-body experience, but it was very much grounded in reality. It was almost so big you couldn't even process it.

Everything flashed in my mind: Studying the civil rights movement in my African American studies classes at UCLA, the struggle of centuries worth of people to build a truly equal society. In this moment, it seems achieved. Like today is the real declaration of independence. In one sense so deeply rooted in the past, but only because it finally IS the future. And the emergence of a generation that will lead America through global technological, diplomatic and environmental challenges.

But moreso because my greatest interest in Barack's candidacy has always been whether or not a semi-normal, decent person with a truly civic objective can ascend through mass media society to a powerful position without compromising his organic values. I never thought it was possible before Barack. I figured if he couldn't do it, then the exercise was inherently futile.

But I jumped on that hope bandwagon, and tonight, at 4am when I still can't sleep, it is one of the most rewarding feelings I've ever had. I was worried last month that if he lost I would be crushed. I just tried not to allow myself to have that negative energy. Before I left for Iowa, I ran to the beach and said a quick prayer for Barack, and for my own attitude. You wonder if such things make a difference, but in the arena tonight our collective power seemed destined.

I'm re-reading these words and they sound so histrionic, but I wish you all could have seen and felt what I did this week in Iowa. What I've been feeling all year. Watching him on stage I thought, "Dr. King had a vision, and Barack is the realization of that dream."

Thanks so much for following along. Thanks to everyone who texted and called today. Maybe we should just skip ahead to 2009? How could the rest of this year possibly live up to this week?