The Obama victory post….

So, after leaving Dave, Dermod and others at Leviathan last night, I toddled off and crashed the US Embassy party in the Guinness Storehouse, where there was fun and mischief with Ivana, Rebecca, Ciarán and others (including, randomly, an introduction to Albert Reynolds!).  It was a terrific party – the booze was free and there were multiple TV channels available in various corners of the room.  I left there at about 3, if memory serves, just as one of the channels had called Ohio, which we all took to mean victory was imminent.

From there, I cycled off to meet some mates at a house party, where we watched the final few hours of drama unfold, culminating in McCain’s reasonably gracious concession speech (though seriously – the crowd were appallingly badly behaved – shocking stuff altogether) and Obama’s victory speech.  Now, I didn’t have time to read the transcript of that speech again this morning, but two things about it leapt out at me at the time.  Firstly, he made it very clear he’s going for a second term (and I thought that line in the speech was bold and enthusiastic – vintage Obama in many ways).  Secondly, they really, really need to work on the rhythm and cadence of the ‘yes, we can’ section, which really had no flow to it at all.  Still, plenty of time to prep the inauguration speech!

So, that’s it, the world has officially been turned on it’s head over the last 12 months or so, and Barack Obama is President of the USA.  I wish him the very best of luck – he’s going to need it to live up to all the hype!

In other, far more depressing news, I’m hearing rumours (though I can’t confirm this yet) that Prop 8 has passed in California – if anyone hears further word on that please let me know.  Similarly, I believe a couple of other states have made constitutional changes to bar same-sex marriage.