On Tuesday I cast my vote for Ralph Nader quite quickly; there was no line at all at my polling place when I got there. Then again, every time I’ve gone there in the past I’ve had women who were old enough to be my grandmothers running the show; this year the poll workers couldn’t have been older than twenty. I’m guessing that they were Obama supporters who volunteered to make sure that things ran smoothly there. Anyway, obviously there was no worry about Nader "spoiling" Ohio this year (although Missouri may be another matter entirely, and ironically may cost me a perfect score on my election projection last week). I was feeling really good about that vote, up until Nader used the words "Uncle Tom" in reference to Barack Obama. Not that I don’t agree with the worry that Obama will put corporate interests above the interests of the American people — that was the primary reason I couldn’t vote for Obama — but you just don’t use those kinds of words, no matter what kind of an analogy you’re trying to make. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have voted for Cynthia McKinney instead.

In between my two illnesses last month I had an opportunity to do some research about the Green Party and the turmoil it’s been through since the 2000 election. I think I had formed some incorrect assumptions about McKinney earlier, although there is still something about her that rubs me the wrong way. In a way, I might have expected Nader’s idiotic comments, given how much more I know now about his relative clumsiness and lack of concern when it comes to social issues. I’m also worried that voting for Nader isn’t helping to develop a third party as much as voting for McKinney would have, but that’s the same kind of tactical decision that makes many liberals and progressives vote Democratic in spite of Democrats not representing their beliefs as well as other candidates, and if I disagree with other people engaging in that kind of voting strategy then I shouldn’t employ it myself. Still, after reading about the struggles of the Green Party in 2004, and being aware of some of the struggles in 2008, it makes it hard for me to want to get involved with the party directly, because it seems like I’d just be entering the middle of some huge infighting that I don’t want to be involved in.

Needless to say, when the election was called for Obama I did a fair bit of crying. Since then I’ve been watching videos of people’s reactions to the call on YouTube, and for a while there they were causing me to cry as well. At first I thought this was simply because I was sad that Dad didn’t quite live long enough to see an African-American elected president, but after some thought I believe there’s something else at work here. I’ve always been interested in fighting for equality — in high school the only club I was involved in all four years was the African-American Club — and during my college years I did a lot of work for GLBT rights. I don’t think I expected that we would elect an African-American president in my lifetime, and now that we have, I guess it fills me with hope that even now, in the wake of Proposition 8’s passage in California and a Republican party that appears to think that the reason they lost so much ground this year was that they weren’t being nasty enough, there is more reason to believe that we can change more minds and enact more laws to ensure the fair treatment of GLBT people.

I’m not even sure that the election has sunk in for me yet. I made sure to watch Obama’s press conference Friday afternoon, and even after watching that, and reading all of these news stories about his plans these past few days, there is still a small disconnect there. Even though I was certain he was going to win the election long ago, there is still some awe and disbelief at the thought that this man is going to be my president in a little over two months. I don’t think that he is going to transform the nation in quite the way that his strongest believers think he will, and no president will stop this coming year from being a hard one in terms of our economy and employment, but there’s little doubt in my mind that he’s going to be a lot better than Dubya was. It’s also gratifying to see the reaction from other countries to our election; I don’t think I’ve seen that many non-Americans waving out country’s flag since the aftermath of the 09.11 attacks.

Of course, all of this does bring up one interesting point. In 2012 I’ll be thirty-six years old, and thus finally constitutionally eligible to run for president. Who wants to start my exploratory committee?