About last night...

No matter your party affiliation, you can't deny that a bit of history was made last night (despite Senator Clinton's destructive delusions that this thing isn't over yet). Over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, readers have been sending in their responses. Here are two that I found particularly moving:

1) "Tomorrow I will go to the African American cemetery outside of Chicago where my great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and my mother and father are buried. And I will tell them that they were right -- that if we studied hard, worked hard, kept the faith, fought for justice, prayed, that this day would come.

And it has."

2) "My grandfather, 86 years old and a veteran of WWII, just gave me a call. He was calling all of his grandchildren to let them know what an important night this was in the history of our country.

Grandpa drove a truck for over 50 years, and he told the story of how he drove with a team of drivers, 2 white (including him), and 4 black. When they stopped at the truck stops, the black drivers had to use separate restrooms and showers, and had to eat in a small room in the back of the kitchen. Grandpa and his co-driver would eat in the back with the rest of the team, and while they didn't speak of it at the time, they knew it was wrong yet felt powerless to change it, and believed that it would never change.

Tonight, he told me, we have come full-circle. Many people, especially the younger generation who supported Obama, will never fully realize the historical import of what happened tonight. But he wanted his grandchildren to know this story that he had never told us, and it was the second time in my 33 years that I have heard my grandpa cry."

Yesterday, I taught The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and selections from Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in English 204. What would they--especially Douglass--have to say about how far we've come in American politics? Today in class, we discussed that great American poet, Walt Whitman. How perfect, right? Consider what Whitman writes in the Preface to Leaves of Grass:

"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes . . ."

Again, Republican, Democrat, whatever you are--you have reason to smile today and be extra proud to be an American.