How About Those White People?

The thing I'd like to point out is, just as I kept saying back in the primary wars, that white working-class people are nowhere near the simple racists white liberals think they are.

I have to say, they surprised me, too. I feared they wouldn't, but hoped they would.

Despite their fears, despite deep suspicion and hard-wired racism, millions of Americans decided yesterday to trust Barack Obama with the keys to the national minivan. A lot of them did it grudgingly and with resentment, but they did it anyway.

They gave him the chance he wanted.

They decided the country was so fucked up, how much worse could that colored fella be? And so they took a leap of faith. Maybe you have to have been far down enough on the food chain to really appreciate that leap.

So much of their reaction to Obama had to do with unfamiliarity -- and yes, hurt feelings. I saw bloggers making fun of something I actually heard in many conversations: "He's half-white -- how come he never talks about that?" Because if they didn't hear him talk with as much pride and warmth about being white as he did about being black, it meant he didn't care about that part. And that left them out of the picture. See?

Elections aren't about intellect. They're about emotion. That's why people so often vote against their own interests.

People who don't have much to begin are always afraid about holding on to what they have. Don't judge them for it. They had different lives than you.

Some viciously racist people who came out of the woodwork for this election, but fortunately there were a lot more of us than there were of them. There were enough white Americans who said, "Well, he might be a colored guy and all, but he doesn't seem that bad."

And that's how they voted.

This is almost as good (okay, better) than the Phillies winning the World Series. Yee haw!

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election