the first of many rambling post-election blogs:

It's hard to put my thoughts about this past election cycle into words. Jeez, feels like this election started eons ago. In some ways, it really started after George W. Bush was re-elected and I went into a weird political funk. I remember having such high hopes that John Kerry would be elected and that we'd begin to undo all the wrongs that had happened under Bush.

And I remember watching the 2004 election results come in and feeling like I had been punched in the gut. Not only were we not undoing the wrongs of the past 4 years, we were rewarding the bastards with another 4 years.

And what a four years those have been. Katrina. Economic collapse. Taliban and Al Queda reconstituting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Increased evidence of the use of torture. Domestic spying. And to make matters worse, we had a President and Vice President who seemed to feel as if they were above the law and were above the American people.

For those of us who appreciated a responsive government that listened to its citizens and obeyed the laws of the land, the past 8 years have felt very oppressive. It seemed like no matter how much we screamed, our protestations fell on deaf and indifferent ears.

I've heard someone recently describe Barack Obama as a rorschach test. Everyone is going to project what they think his messages mean and what they expect of the man. For me, he's truly been a messenger of "hope." He's been a faint beacon of light through these past few years. And as the years progressed and he thew his hat into the election ring, that faint light got brighter and brighter.

I think there are a lot of cynics out there who scoff at the very thought of Obama as a candidate of hope. There's a part of me that scoffed at the idea that I put so much intellectual and emotional energy into Barack's candidacy.

I've been wrestling with what "hope" means in 2008. For me, hope is what I didn't have on September 12th when our president failed to ask us, as a country, to step up and advance bold new initiatives. Hope is what I didn't have when our president called for the open discrimination of LGBT people with that horrible proposed constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages. Hope is what I didn't have as I watched a city drown while our city, state, and national governments failed to act. Hope is what I didn't have as I came to the realization that our country systematically tortured prisoners of war. Hope is what I didn't have as I watched Iraq destabilize. I had very little hope in our country when our president and the Republicans around him decided that division and manipulation were a suitable form of government.

And through all that, we had one of the weakest minority parties in United States history. I don't want to heap it on the Dems too much, because 9/11 had barely turned to 9/12 when the mere thought of dissent was deemed as unpatriotic by the ruling powers. Where we were told that love of country belonged to one party. But it seemed like decision after horrible Republican decision was seconded by the Democratic party.

If the Democrats had one major flaw in 2004, it was the ability to express what it was that they stood for in a way that grabbed voters. 2004 was a "not Bush" election. We weren't so much a party of ideas as a party of "not Bush."

But that all seemed to change with Barack's electrifying 2004 keynote speech in front of the Democratic National Convention. Here we were, a party that was muzzled by its inability to express what it was that we stood for and what we were fighting for, and here was this man that was telling us exactly what we were conceptualizing in our heads but couldn't openly express.

You could feel a shift happening. I could feel it in the living room where I watched that speech. You could see it in the faces of the people in attendance at the convention. It really was a paradigm shift for the Democratic Party.

His speech was absolutely right on. We weren't a nation of red states and blue states. We were one people in the United States. We worshipped an awesome god and coached little league in the blue states. We had gay and lesbian friends and didn't like federal agents rummaging through our personal records in the red states.

It was the ultimate FUCK YOU speech. What was once lack of hope and bitterness at a divisive president turned to a righteous anger at how the Bush Administration could have done this to us when we longed for so much more. 9/11 united us as a country. It brought us all together. And Bush and Cheney spat in our faces with their divisive politics that pitted us against one another.

And Obama's 2004 speech was the first time many of us had a healthy way to channel that anger and resentment. Instead of feeling down at how divided we had become and what we had lost as a country, we rediscovered our patriotism. Heroes always come around when you need them the most.

That's what "hope" has been for me this election cycle.

more later...

- Matt