I've never before considered getting together with friends and neighbors to watch the acceptance speech of a Presidential candidate. I'm sure such things have happened before, with political junkies and party insiders, but I think the kind of event I attended last night was happening all over the country (I know for a fact that Middletown's Democratic Town Committee hosted an event at Wesleyan's USDAN center for students - an event, which many say, would not have occured when Doug Bennett was president).
I was fortunate
enough to be invited to Bob and Maria Holzberg's house in Middletown, along with a group of like-minded supporters of Barack Obama. I found myself, along with the people in the room, applauding the TV screen after the speeches.
We had regular phone reports from
Jen Alexander, who was in Mile High Stadium in Denver (though she was actually outside Mile High Stadium for three hours with ten thousand people in line, waiting to get into the packed arena, and eventually got in before Obama spoke), and her phone calls were giddy with the excitement of being in the mayor's suite (Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, formerly a Wesleyan student and Middletown resident), with her family, witnessing the historic event.
For his part, Obama gave the speech of a lifetime, shedding the dreadful history of the past eight years, and looking toward the future.
I left the Holzberg's with an Obama bumper sticker which I immediately placed over the
Impeach sticker which has been on the car for three years.
