The historic victory of Barack Obama: perspectives from Chicago and New York

[INTRODUCTION/MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

[BEEPS/HUBBUB IN BACKGROUND]

BARACK OBAMA:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

[CROWD CHEERS]

MAN:

I guess you can say you’re equal. It shows that you can be a president now instead of being just a barber.

WOMAN:

You can be anything.

MAN:

Yeah, you can be anything. If you can be the president, you can be anything. Yeah.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Good morning, everyone. That’s Barack Obama, of course, and a voter in Atlanta, Georgia last night. In the end it wasn’t about sliced and diced constituencies. It wasn’t hockey moms versus wedge issues. It was America that decided that Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

Joining us in our studio to talk about this historic election and how it was decided by America this time rather than a strategic tactical sort of slicing and dicing of the electorate is Patrik Henry Bass, Takeaway contributor, our friend, and editor ? senior editor at Essence Magazine. And, of course, Adaora is live down there in WCLK in Atlanta. Good morning, Adaora.

ADAORA UDOJI:

Good morning, John.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

My question to you, Patrik, what just happened?

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Good morning. Hey, first I want to say that being a barber is not so easy, you know, [LAUGHS] –

[OVERTALK]

I wish he’d talk to my barber.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

His hair is shaved. His head is shaved [?].

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

[LAUGHS] So we now have the first African-American President of the United States of America. And I was on 125th Street in Harlem ? that’s a historic street ? and just being with the crowd, I mean, the roar, you know, the thunderous applause, this was bigger than Joe Louis defeating Max Schmeling. This was bigger than Jackie Robinson suiting up with the Dodgers. It was a moment that so many people on that street and across America never thought that they would see, me being one of them.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

You know, I had a feeling, though, watching Barack Obama at the speech in Grant Park, looking at that crowd and just feeling some of the sort of reactions that you’re feeling on the question of race, it also felt huger than even that. It seemed bigger than ? it seemed like realignment politically but also a sense of righteousness about racial quality expressed by that voter.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Well, exactly. Well, there were two experiences that I had. There was the experience in Harlem and then when I returned home to Fort Greene in Brooklyn I saw, you know, kids who were probably under 25, mainly white, who felt like this was their election as well.

So, you know, for the folks in Harlem, I think that what they were feeling was for the first time they weren’t in the margins of the national storyline; that they were central to this storyline and it had a happy ending. And race played a factor in that.

You know, for so long they have been disappointed. When they watched an election it was like Groundhog Day, you know, the Bill Murray movie where it [LAUGHS] always had the same outcome. And for once the outcome was something that was happy. You know, there was a sense of jubilation that none of them had ever experienced or ever felt.

The younger kids hadn’t voted again and again and again –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Right.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

– you know, to see that type of disappointment. And the whole notion of Barack Obama’s racelessness, it’s going to be interesting to watch, because I went back to Essence’s offices, and when he delivered his speech everyone was excited until he started to get pretty serious and started to move away from symbolism to the hard work –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

[LAUGHS] Yeah.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

– that the nation had to do.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

It’s like ? yeah.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

And then everyone was, like, oh, wow, you know –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Wow.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

– you know, like this is not going to be easy. There –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

The numbers are interesting, Adaora. I wonder if you’re following this? Ninety-six percent of African-American voters voted for Barack Obama but they increased their share of the electorate from 11 percent to 13 percent.

ADAORA UDOJI:

Right.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Right.

ADAORA UDOJI:

I think what was fascinating ? just to go back to the point about the crowd ? it was almost surreal to see all of those faces, those black, white, Asian, Latino faces, the intense emotion and joy and the tears, and then to see the First Family Elect on the stage and to see such a diversity of people.

I mean, you had Barack Obama and his wife and his two daughters, his two black daughters, and you had some of their members of their family, and then you had Joe Biden and his members of their family. And here’s the vision of the leadership of America come January, 2009.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Exactly. What also felt in Harlem and also when I returned to the offices at Essence is that, you know, there was a sense for a second that this was our president. And then that moment came when we realized this is also our America.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Yeah.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

And, like, that was a feeling that so many people hadn’t had before as well.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Patrik, do you think that Barack Obama owes, in a strange kind of way, a debt of gratitude to George W. Bush for his disheartening of America; his essentially failed presidency paved the way for the plausibility of Barack Obama? In a sense, George W. Bush removed an obstacle that might have been there had this been a normal election cycle.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Well, the joke on the street is that George Bush was such a terrible president that, you know, only a black man could, you know, do the job; [LAUGHS] like he had sort ? that, you know, that, you know, he had mucked it up so badly, you know, like let’s see who else could do a great job. That’s a joke on the street.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Right.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

But without the failings of the Bush Administration, I don’t think that Barack Obama’s ascendancy could have happened. I mean, you know, if he had been a, you know, stronger president ? which it was ? I feel like it was impossible. I think the gig was up two years ago for him.

ADAORA UDOJI:

And, Patrik, as a student of history, the one that you are, having written several books on-

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Thank you very much. I’ll take that [?]. [5:47] [OVERTALK] –

ADAORA UDOJI:

– African-American history, where does this fit on the continuum?

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

Well, I mean, this is ? oh, Adaora, this is huge. I mean, this is something that, I mean, like if you look at the national narrative, we’ve not turned a corner but we did turn a page, a significant page in that Barack Obama, while he doesn’t have a mandate, he had a broad-based coalition of, you know, voters who had never been together en masse in this way before.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, and celebrating in Chicago, in the Second City, where the Barack Obama Express finally parked itself in Grant Park amidst 100,000 jubilant voters and supporters ? Ben Calhoun, who’s a reporter for WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, was at the rally last night and joins us to give us an account of what went on there in Grant Park. Ben, thanks for joining us.

BEN CALHOUN:

Good morning, everybody.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, what was it like amongst the crowd there?

BEN CALHOUN:

You know, it was phenomenal. The reaction was really kind of a three-parter. It was like ? and I don’t know whether this came across on the TV screens, but the whole crowd sort of hung on this peg of disbelief for a long time.

As the mathematical window closed on John McCain, people didn’t really accept it. It was this reluctance to accept what was happening. And it wasn’t until it was officially called at 10 p.m. Central, 11 Eastern that people just exploded.

And I have never seen a crowd reaction or a political rally that was anything like this.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

And, you know, tell me about the crowd and who was there and faces that you saw that maybe made this different from other things. A lot of stuff goes on in Grant Park there in Chicago.

PATRIK HENRY BASS:

[LAUGHS]

BEN CALHOUN:

Yeah. You know, there was this grappling that took place that was really unique once that excitement hit ? people trying to wrap their minds and their emotions around this moment.

I spoke to this one young man, Ahmed [?] Gordon ? he lives in Chicago Heights ? and he was describing how he was trying to put this in historical context but then also in the context of his own life. This is what Ahmed said.

[BEEPING SOUND]

AHMED GORDON:

You hear older, you know, like, African-Americans talk about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, talking about Martin Luther King. I wasn’t alive to see that. But this is my time to see something for the first time, so something that later on I can tell the younger generation I was there when Barack Obama became the first, you know, African-American president. That is ridiculous.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

You know, you can definitely hear people grabbing at the history of the moment. I’m wondering if there was any sort of cautionary moment of, like, oh, my goodness, now we’ve got to actually do something here?

BEN CALHOUN:

Well, that’s for sure. I mean, people were sizing up right away, you know, what he does when he walks in on day one. He’s got huge challenges internationally and domestically when it comes to the economy. It’s just unbelievable.

And people were wondering, you know, what does he do? Coming off of this incredible high, this incredible historic moment, how does he step into those very real shoes?

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

But you weren’t –

ADAORA UDOJI:

And Ben, and Ben –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Go ahead.

ADAORA UDOJI:

– how did the crowd react when Barack Obama addressed that, saying it was going to take everyone, everyone that voted for him, everyone that didn’t vote for him, to address the challenges ahead?

BEN CALHOUN:

You know, there was very unique reaction, not just to his speech and things like that, but also to McCain’s speech. It was surprising. There seemed to be in both speeches tonight, I think, a tonal shift in sort of the rhetorical bedrock of American politics as we’ve seen it for the last eight years, this reaching across the aisle and reaching out of the country and not just in.

And the crowd really responded to comments that both senators made in their speeches along those lines.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, I mean, history will judge the Bush presidency whatever way it will, and there’s a lot to spin out there, but I think at the very least we can say that people were dancing in the streets that something is over, something has ended that they very much wanted to be ended.

The question is, is Barack Obama the vehicle for delivering on those hopes? And I guess that’s what made that party so significant and festive at the time, right, Ben?

BEN CALHOUN:

Absolutely. And walking down ? when ? once the crowd left Grant Park, they closed down Michigan Avenue, and just throngs of people were headed out in every direction.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Wow.

BEN CALHOUN:

They were standing on ledges, shouting. They were waving banners. They were singing, dancing. I mean, it was [OVERTALK] –

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

A great scene, and we’re going to leave America –

[LAUGHTER]

– with that scene in this segment. Ben Calhoun from WBEZ, Chicago via ? in our studio. Thanks for joining us. What’s – [OVERTALK]

BEN CALHOUN:

Great, thank you. [?] [10:48]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

– your sense of what just happened? 877-8MYTAKE.