The most enjoyable part of my election night was walking away from hipster Williamsburg and past a laundromat where Obama’s acceptance speech was playing. Inside the laundromat was a young Orthodox Jewish couple, a biracial lesbian couple, a handful of young adults looking up at a TV. As strange as this scene felt – either a classic 1980s tableau of diversity, or as Dana Stevens wrote, Sesame Street-esq – it matched my mood better than the parties in the streets. Barack Obama’s landslide win seems suprising and surreal.
Since I can’t process the election, I wonder: what are the fights we can try to win now? Obama and the Democrats have already come out in support of federally-funded stem cell research. John Dickerson writes in Slate that Obama can be a different president by “increase disclosure and transparency” refering to campaign financing. But what does this mean for the Patriot Act, abstinence-only education, and the current state of expanded executive power?