Many of the homes in the suburbs I grew up in have deed restrictions that forbid even renting the house to blacks. Not just a few, I'm talking entire incorporated cities of houses. The deed restrictions were enforced until about the time I entered grade school.
And that school I entered is a landmark from a desegregation case (Webb v School District No. 90, South Park Johnson County the immediate precursor to Brown v Board of Education) and my father was 13 years old when it was litigated.
I'm a broken record, too, on disproportionate minority incarceration, also known as the war on drugs. White folks do drugs, far as I can tell, as avidly as blacks. But blacks go to prison for it. Whites generally have to aggravate the offense by getting in an Operation 100 and burning down their Mom's trailer with a meth lab before they get more than a couple of weekends in the county clink.
So anyway, all of which is to say I teared up a little as Juan Williams talked about how he didn't believe this was possible even a year ago.
I'm cynical as all get out about the nature of the political game. As I admitted last night, the one time I ever put even partial faith in a set of politicians to do even one or two things right, they promptly took that faith and wiped their asses with it before setting it on fire and pissing in the ashes.
But even if the game is phony on many levels, it is played hard. And Barrack Obama, credit where it's due, played to win.
It is part of the problem that it's largely a matter of who can raise the most money, but he didn't whine about it, he just went and raised a shit-pile of money. There's a McDonald's not far from you, wherever you are, and it's not because they have great food. It's because if you advertise hard enough, people will eat almost anything. The fact that what little TV I've watched lately was four Obama ads to one McCain told me which McCandidate was going to be the next McPresident.
Obama's organization put offices on every corner, it seemed, something that's probably going to be both party's model from now on. He beat out Hillary, who had a machine that would have made it look easy in any election I can remember.
So here's the thing. I'm touched, I really am, that a black man can win the Presidency in a country where I still see 'stars & bars' in the back window of pickup trucks. But here's the hard part, folks.
Barrack Obama has to deliver. He will have no excuses. He's picked up bigger majorities in the House and Senate, which never happens for a first term President. Okay, it's happened, but it hasn't happened since the Great Depression. He won't be filibuster-proof, but there's enough liberal Republicans in the Senate that I don't see very many things actually getting filibustered. The press adores him, even Fox News seems to be a bit verklempt.
I personally don't believe he can fulfill much of anything in the way of campaign promises he made. I don't expect I'll have health care on par with members of Congress, nor do I believe my premiums will go down. My taxes, I doubt very much they're going down either. I'll be amazed if he actually gets us out of Iraq, and if he does, I'll be more amazed if it doesn't spark off a worse conflagration in the region.
So here's my challenge to Barrack Obama: prove me wrong. Make me eat my hat, for real. You have your mandate and almost nothing in the way of serious obstacles*, and you've proven that you can overcome big, big obstacles. So show me. Make me believe.
*Unless you consider the following serious obstacles:
• Providing Congress-member level health care to millions of uninsured and to the already insured while making it all cheaper.
• Cutting income taxes for 95% of workers when nowhere near 95% of workers pay income tax.
• Getting us out of Iraq without instigating a genocide followed by a war with Iran that has us back on the scene a year later with a bigger fight on our hands.
• Etc.
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