President Barack Obama and way too much champagne

More than 130 million Americans voted in yesterday's election, the most in our history! Folks rose to the occasion!

I wrote about this momentous occasion in my column this week. And then I ran out of the office like I was being chased.  My rationale for not working election night, the most important day for journalists was this:  when I look back I want to remember that I witnessed this election surrounded by people for whom the moment held the same magnificent meaning. 

We used the fine crystal for our bubbly and settled down to an evening of election returns punctuated by whooping, fist bumping and dancing around our living room. I knew I would have a headache the next day, and I do. But the most important election in my life time, and that of my parents and grandparents was no time to pretend to be unmoved. 

My neighbor, a stay-at-home mom who home schools her three children and believes in homeopathic remedies, baked an "Obama" cake, a chocolate-covered ring adorned with M&Ms added throughout the night to match the number of electoral votes won by Obama.

Surprises for me, included the large swaths of Latino voters in Florida who normally break Republican but voted this time for Obama. He pulled the young vote and his technologically efficient campaign ought to be a model for anyone planning to seek public office. 

Throughout the night and today, people have sent me anecdotes that tell me I'm not alone in my euphoria. There was the hard-bitten corporate lawyer happily ensconced in his fifties and his suburban McMansion breaking down in tears when Obama reached the winning number of electoral votes.  There was my home-schooling neighbor who spent the day making "get out the vote" calls for Obama and related the elderly Minnesota woman she talked to who was half-blind and in her 90s but was awaiting a ride to the polls so she could vote. No one wanted to let history pass them by. 

The Wall Street Journal attributed Obama's win to angst over the economy. But it was about so much more. In the Seattle area where I live, voters overwhelmingly approved tax increases for everything from parks and roads to fire stations. Angst doesn't send 130 million to the polls; hope does.

I'll leave off  with a sweet letter to our new president from the writer Alice Walker. Her charge to Obama: cultivate happiness, responsibility and good will in his own life and it will be a model the rest of America will follow.  Words to live by. Et tu?