I think some conservatives get really scared at the ridiculously huge crowds supporting Obama, and maybe even annoyed at the sight of him at the Lincoln Memorial.

I’m psyched for a few reasons. Obama himself is only a small component of those. He’s just a guy, an imperfect human. But what I think is so inspirational about Tuesday is a number of things:

• It’s President Bush’s last day. “01.20.09” bumper stickers have been around for a couple years. Looking back, I almost feel sorry for GWB. He took office amid tremendous controversy, the election being decided by the Supreme Court. The economy wasn’t quite as amazing as it was during the center of Clinton’s term. And 9/11 certainly put a damper on things. I don’t buy into the MIHOP conspiracy theories. But I do believe that the Iraq War (including Guantanamo) has cost about 4,000 American lives, distracted us from finding Osama bin Laden, and made us an international pariah. Hurricane Katrina was an unmitigated disaster, and overhearing the name Michael Brown on the news brought back the full absurdity of having an Arabian horse judge head up FEMA. The full blame for the present economic collapse can’t be heaped on Bush, but I’m certainly with the two-thirds of America that thinks he hasn’t helped. His repeated use of terms like, “The economy cratered” don’t help to inspire confidence. Warrantless wiretapping. Waterboarding. And so forth. I’m not saying that Bush was pure evil, just that I won’t be sorry to see him return to the private sector.
• I’m politically cynical. I didn’t like McCain, hated Hillary Clinton, thought Kucinich was crazy, hoped Romney got run over by a bus, and think Gore is better at his environmental stuff than he would have been in elected office. There are millions of people like me. My demographics—people in their teens and 20s—is one of the most politically-apathetic demographics on the face of the planet. I spent my month-long winter break volunteering for Obama. Many of my fellow volunteers had also never gotten involved in politics, or even really cared.
• But we weren’t just campaigning for a man named Barack Obama. We were campaigning to take the government back from the wealthy and from big corporations. We were fighting to take back the role of America as a defender of international human rights. We were pounding pavement to talk about equal rights. In short, Obama was just the spokesman for a novel new concept: a government of the people, by the people, and, most of all, for the people. The election of Obama, then, stands as an important reminder: if we, the American people, don’t like the government, we, the American people, can rise up and change it, to make it serve our needs.
• As much as some on the right love to argue that he’s only half-black, I think the election of a black man to the Oval Office is a major milestone in America. And anything that gets the KKK riled up is probably a good thing for America. Without meaning to imply that people who preferred McCain were racist, there were undeniably some overtly racist people out there protesting Obama. His election shows that, although racism is alive and well in America, it can’t hold a candle (or a burning cross?) to the tolerance of America.

For people like me who will be stuck in the office Tuesday 11:56 a.m., here’s a discussion of some places that will be streaming it. I rarely listen to WBCN these days, but they mentioned that they would be streaming it on their site, too.

In the meantime, check out the Yes We Can song. Though I didn’t like it musically at first, it’s grown on me, to the point that it’s really powerful and moving. A bit of trivia: the Yes We Can song, by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, is sampled from Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech… at Nashua High. Our spirits were high on election day, with one poll showing Obama leading Clinton by as much as 10%. But in an upset victory, Clinton won the NH Democratic Primary. Obama’s concession speech at Nashua High, though cordially recognizing Clinton’s success, was called “anything but a concession” (though I can’t come up with the citation). About nine minutes in is the start of the “famous” part of the speech.

Of course, his loss in New Hampshire wasn’t a major setback. Here’s Obama’s speech on election night, addressing the nation for the first time with what would soon become a tiresome phrase: President-elect Barack Obama.

But in 38 hours, we’ll drop the “-elect,” and begin the process of reshaping America. And what a day it will be.