One Day

Maybe one day, I'll move on from all this, but I wanted to share some great things that have come across my desk here are Election Central.

Today I got an email from our fearless leader at the phone bank, John.  John is a retired middle school math teacher and served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone.  He is one of those people who is just a quintessential educator.  He ignites the fire within you and finds ways to effortlessly bring out strengths in everyone.  He also can twist your arm and convince you to do something without it feeling like he's twisting your arm.  He just presents a good, rational argument for why things should be a certain way.  As much as I wanted to go door-to-door in Reno, John convinced me that the action was right here in Palo Alto during that last weekend.  And was he ever right.  We made a quarter million calls in those last four days (the perspective here is that our region generally made more calls than all of New York State, the second highest state in call totals after CA, and we made half a million calls after Labor Day).  I never got to be on a true championship sports team.  While my college team won our league a few times and won some NCAA games, this is the closest I've come to that feeling of everyone being in the zone, working so fluidly together, choosing positivity and friendship over stress and pessimism.  And to be honest, I'd rather have this victory anyway.  Over the summer, it became clear to me that I needed to do what I could to help Obama get into office.  And I feel confident saying that there I know many people here, part of Silicon Valley For Obama, who left it all on the field this time.  I am proud to say that I am one of them.

This slideshow is something I doubt I will ever tire from watching.  The man who made it, Curt, is another one of the truly great men we had in the office.  He is someone who puts you at ease, supports you, and includes everyone.  For those of you who have the time to watch, he has composed a beautiful thing here, and I don't know if our office and our people could be captured better.  And I think it speaks better than I can about why this was so meaningful to me.

Here is a great article from the New Yorker.  Having seen the focus, organization, and drive of this campaign at the end, I learned a lot about its genesis from this article.  And here are the smart people behind the Obama campaign on 60 minutes.  The New Yorker article led me to watch Obama's speech at the Jefferson and Jackson dinner.  No notes, no teleprompter, and absolutely amazing.  Many of you know that I tend to stay clear of primary season.  Watching Democrats who have generally agreed about most things (especially all of those who work together in the Senate) nit pick to get ahead of each other is tough for me to deal with.  So, I'm catching up now on Obama's speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire.  It was a tough primary season, this one, and I hope that Democrats around the country know no regrets.  

Then there's Will.I.Am on Oprah.  Love it!

There have been a lot of people interviewed on the news who are saying they are finally proud of America.  Most of these comments are miscontrued by people who consider themselves "true patriots" and I don't think they are meant as a blanket insult to our country up to now.  But, as someone who grew up very patriotic...memorizing the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble to the Consitution and always thinking about every word I was saying during the Pledge of Allegiance and always excited to vote, it's been a bit crushing.  The elections of 2000 and 2004 took away a little (maybe a lot) of the hope I had as a kid.  The hope that we lived in an amazing country of thoughtful individuals working to bring people together and get things done.  If we recall, the founders of this country were extremely smart men and lately we've shunned politicians who come off as "elitist."  The founders of this country were not particularly religious men and yet we are quick to exclude or at least doubt non-Christians from consideration on the national scale.  I hope that we keep working through these kinks and insecurities.

So, here we are and it seems like we might have that hope back.  Time will tell.  On January 20 (or maybe 21) we will start to see if we as a whole country can hold onto that hope for the next four years.  We can bet that our new president will be holding on to that hope.

And long live fivethirtyeight.com.