Obama

Pretty surreal, isn't it?

I spent most of the day forgetting that Obama was the president-elect and then being like, "Holy shit!"

It's pretty surreal and really, really exciting. Even the staunchest liberal-haters have to be in some amount of awe over the magnitude of this moment.

In any case, there are already 85,000 op-eds on the topic, so I'll spare you the rhetoric. But if you haven't re-watched Obama's acceptance speech, you probably should. Watching this, I had to keep reminding myself it wasn't a scene from a Hollywood movie. Frankly, if Hollywood made a movie about the first black president getting elected, and this were the final 20 minutes of the movie, it would be one of those movies where it ends and the credits start rolling and everyone stays in their seats for another minute (you can tell how powerful a movie ending is by how long it takes before people get up once the credits roll).

Here's the speech:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

For fun, compare that acceptance speech to Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 DNC. I remember watching the '04 speech-- it was the first time I had heard of Obama. The speech blew me away. And I remember thinking, "That young black guy might be a senator? Wow, cool!" But watching it again now, he seems kind of mini. He's like a mini version of his current self. He's all green and boyish. And in last night's speech, he's absurdly confident and commanding and powerful-seeming-- like a completely believable commander-in-chief.

The 2004 speech:

Part 1
Part 2

Anyway, this is big. It's ridiculously big. And in 100 years it's going to seem even bigger than it does right now. Apparently President Sarkozy of France wrote to Obama today, "Your election raises in France, in Europe, and beyond throughout the world, immense hope."

I'm getting a little teary-eyed right now.