Change Comes from Within Edition

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

--Harry Emerson Fosdick

Many of the photos in this edition are from Callie Shell's wonderful documents of the Obama campaign. Well worth a visit.

I found it through the utterly addictive No Caption Needed, a blog devoted to the craft of photojournalism. This may be one of the sites I use to help me get through the weeks that follow my detox from polling websites.

The LA Times had an interesting piece today also on what they see as the four questions that this election is really about. "Who wins, and where, will shed light on the nation's feelings on race, the role of government and the hold of partisanship on the public dialogue."

1. Has America's racial divide narrowed?
2. Is the country still divided into red and blue?
3. Do American's want more from Government?
4. Has the electorate changed dramatically?

Garrison Keillor had these musings from a trip travelling through Oklahoma. "In Tulsa, in 1921, there was a big race riot following the arrest of a young black man who was alleged to have touched a white woman on the arm. Fighting in the streets, neighborhoods torched, the National Guard called in—and this story seems medieval to us, a dark age almost beyond our ken. That culture is gone, gone, gone, and on Tuesday we bury it by the simple democratic process of voting for the best man even though his father was African."

Why does this election means so much to me? I keep thinking about why I feel so personally about this thing. I've surprised even my usually politically active and indignant self. Why have I been so obsessed with every detail, every up and down, every poll, every interview? Why have I ranted nearly every day for two months to dozens of people in email after email...?

Even before the rants, my obsession has lasted from the time I staked my support in Hillary's campaign through the heady summer days when I turned it to Obama. We had then and have now so much promise on offer to us: a tough-minded, powerful woman who could have become the first woman to lead this country, an incredibly smart and inspirational man who could be the first African American president. In that primary season, look at the candidates, Bill Richardson, the first Latino Democrat to launch a campaign for president. John Edwards, the son of a working class mill worker. You had Mike Gravel, a dyslexic son of French-Canadian immigrants who grew up speaking only French until he was seven. You had Dennis Kucinich, whose background as a Croatian Roman-Catholic never even got referenced. Remember the controversy over Kennedy's Catholicism? Seems like a funny footnote to history now. America is so many things, so many different kinds of people, so many kinds of problems and challenges now, and it seems impossible, unthinkable that we could draw all these various constituencies together. And yet, somehow, this is exactly what Obama is doing with a breathtakingly precise organization. But it's more than just great infrastructure. The last two months we've have seen good people, conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, East Coast and West Coast, Southern and Northerner, come out against racism, tell us there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim-American, that "pro-life" can mean being "pro-choice," tell pollsters and pundits that what matters is not the color of a person's skin, but his ideas. I look at all of that and realize that at the core--at least for me-- an Obama win will mean the declaration from the country, from the people that yes, we ARE a better country now, we ARE a better people now.