The epilogue of Iowa was that after the Obama victory rally, Pat and I drove Ms. White home and then went out to a dive bar in East Des Moines.  There, we met two wonderful Des Moines residents wearing Obama stickers.  Seeing our candidate support in common, we talked politics, travel, school, and life with them well into the night.

This is the wonderful thing about politics.  At its best, politics is the universal equalizer.  No matter how rich, educated, connected, or good-looking an individual is, his or her vote counts as much as everyone else’s.  Everyone is entitled to have an opinion, and in an ideal world, opinions all matter the same.  They say you aren’t supposed to talk about politics with people, but I think that’s a false dictum.  Politics is the universal science.  Being a member of the community is the one item on which everyone can connect.  Even if we disagree, we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about our differences, because merely having an opinion puts us as members of the same club.  The bar in East Des Moines was testament to that.  And that’s what I hope for out of the public sphere–that it becomes a place where everyone can come together, with equal representation and equal voice, and at least communicate.  I saw that happen in Iowa.

Since Iowa, I have of course been watching the New Hampshire polls closely.   I will unfortunately board a plane in Chicago about the time that the polls close in New Hampshire, and arrive in London the next morning.  I won’t know who won until well after you guys do!   I am optimistic by Obama’s recent poll returns, but we’ll see.

I am excited to go back to Oxford.  Adjusting to Oxford life and the UK in the first term was more difficult than I thought it would be.  But I’ve had some good time on free soil to re-calibrate my thoughts and figure out how to attack this next term at The Big Ox.  It’s like a team going into the locker room for half-time–I’ve made some crucial adjustments separated from it all.  They say that you can judge a coach by how good his team does right after halftime.

My favorite readings of the last few days:

This was sent to me by my friend Katie.  It involves what I think to be one of the greatest weaknesses in progressive thinkers in general.  Democrats and progressives take a moral high ground, even when they lose elections, saying “well, we are the most competent/intellectually correct candidate, so we only lost because people are ignorant.”  This article argues (and I agree) that, in fact, this argument is incorrect.

Scroll down to “Competency as a Cultural Value”

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/

Fantastic David Brooks article about how going negative on Obama may just not work, and how Huckabee fits into the Conservative Revolution…

The Two Earthquakes

And finally, the attacks on Obama for being too idealistic are seeming a bit lame to me.  Sen. Clinton criticized Obama in Saturday’s debate for raising “false hopes.”

Obama’s response today: “It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying ‘don’t feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check, you know?’ I mean, you can picture JFK saying, ‘we can’t go to the moon, it’s a false hope. Let’s get a reality check.’ It’s not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been.”

And then Sen. Clinton seemed to the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that it took President Johnson to actually pass the Civil Rights movement.  This is true, to be sure, but Martin Luther King also inspired the pressure that led to that change.

Words matter.  Pat and I saw this in Iowa, and in a country that is deeply hurting with pessimism cloaked as “being realistic,” it’s nice to get this excited about something for once.

I’m also excited to go back to the UK and see the New Hampshire results when I get off the plane.

So Atlanta has just been awarded a WNBA franchise.  The WNBA–It’s FAAAAAAAN-Tastic!

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/hawks/stories/2007/10/16/wnba_1017.html

The most important bit of this news, to me, is the name.  When Atlanta got an Arena football team a few years ago, they had a “name-the-team” contest.  My friend Ricky and I submitted the name “Phoenix.”  It made enough sense–the Phoenix is the official mascot of Atlanta (the city “rising from the ashes” post-1865), and Phoenix fits with the Atlanta “bird family” (Hawks, Falcons, Thrashers).  The three finalists for the team name were Phoenix, Force, and Arsenal.  The fans were to vote and choose the team name.

Phoenix overwhelmed the other two choices in the vote.

But the people were denied.  Virgil Williams, the owner, instead chose “Force.”

I have again suggested “Phoenix” for the WNBA team’s name.  If Phoenix wins this time, I promise to pay attention to our new WNBA team.