Robert L. Terrell

In less than 48 hours, the people of these United States will pass a history-making verdict regarding the presidential campaigns being waged by Barack Obama and John McCain.  One of them represents the future, and the other the past.  One represents a leap of faith in the possibility of mass enfranchisement, and the other the certainty of maintaining the systems of race, gender and class-based apartheid that distinguishes this nation from all over developed societies.

As a result, it is clear to all but that immensely curious contingent of undecided voters that this is probably the most important presidential election in living memory.  Most of the polls indicate that the majority of those who are descending on the polling places propelled by hopes, fears and unprecedented dreams, favor Obama.  But the stakes are so high, the outcome so uncertain, that many of us are barely capable of containing our welling emotions.

Obama represents the best that the U.S. has to offer at this moment–to its own citizens, and to people around the world.  Sensing impending victory, he has begun again to deliver those soaring, inspirational speeches, which send rippling chills up one’s spine.  Part of it is his masterful speaking style.  But the chills are mostly due to the impressive breadth, and challenging audacity, of his deeply inspiring vision for this society.  Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the last major U.S. politicians to deliver such extraordinarily moving speeches.

In contrast, McCain, the aging, desperate warrior for wealth, privilege and imperial military hegemony, is laboring mightily, in his apparently doomed effort to cobble together one more victory.  He is a sad figure, lashing out with irrational attacks, sulking, accusing, pouting, and losing all the while.  The most notable indication that time has passed him by is his misguided, over-the-top, attacks on Obama’s promise to spread the wealth if elected. 

As far as McCain is concerned, egalitarian commitments of this sort are unconscionable attacks on the kind of America that has provided him eight homes and 13 automobiles.  Somehow or another, McCain is oblivious, and possibly uncaring, regarding the fact that the vast majority of citizens in this nation are significant victims of the philosophy and political cabal that have made him and members of his class wealthy, and morally reprehensible.

Willie Brown, the Dean of contemporary California politicians, asserted this morning in his weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle that Obama is the Jackie Robinson of American politics.  He is partially correct.  Obama’s success to this point has already transformed the manner in which the national political narrative can be spun. Thus, from this point forward public dialogue, and political accomplishment will be perceived and discussed from a broader perspective.  If nothing else, such dialogue will no longer be based on the assumption that self serving, wealthy white males are inherently superior, and unquestionably more qualified for high office than everyone else.  From this point forward, they will have to earn public credibility and respect like everyone else.  It took more than 200 years of struggle, which is culminating before our very eyes in the triumphant candidacy of Barack Obama, for this to become the case.    

In any event, my perspective is somewhat different from Willie Brown’s.  My best sense is that the transforming, tidal wave of enthusiasm and hope responsible for Obama’s rise to prominence has far broader ramifications than did Jackie Robinson’s lonely, black figure in the all-white world of major league baseball, which at the time was essentially a provincial game restricted largely to the U.S., and those sections of the world that it had colonized.

The point to be grasped is that Obama is more than a national figure.  During the past two years, he has evolved from being a little-known Senator into an inspiring global symbol of what the United States is capable of achieving.  All the data from abroad indicate that people around the world are hoping–by an overwhelmingly large margin–that he defeats McCain.  This is due to recognition that a staggeringly large percentage of the world’s populace will not, and can not, advance in accordance with their dreams unless and until the kinds of reforms advocated by Obama are implemented.

This does not mean that people consider Obama to be a savior, nor does it mean that his electric emergence is the product of cult-of-personality worship.  The spontaneous “yes we can” chants which regularly occur at his rallies are indicative of the fact that people realize he is their vehicle for change.  The grass roots dimension of the Obama candidacy has yet to be fully appreciated.  The people in this nation are on the move, and there is every good reason to believe their support for Barack Obama is only the beginning of what they intend to achieve via their desires to make this a more perfect society.      

Whether he wins or loses Tuesday election, Obama represents the emergence of a new order in much the same manner as did Simon Bolivar, Mao Zedong, Patrice Lumumba, Mahatma Gandhi, Jomo Kenyatta, Ho Chi Minh and Nelson Mandela.  In their own ways, each of these men presented his society with the kinds of unprecedented transformations inherent in the rise of Barack Obama.

Recognizing this fact, the racist, sexist, reactionary old guard here in the United States is apoplectic.  Nonetheless, they are proving incapable of repressing the infectious demands for change erupting throughout the nation during these last hours of the presidential campaign.  People are voting in unprecedented numbers, even though many of them are being forced to wait hour upon hour in long lines without seats, water or shade. 

Every effort by McCain and his fellow traveling agents of the status quo to impede voting by those at the bottom of the social order is being stymied.  As was the case during the the most inspiring periods of other great mass movements during the course of the nation’s history, the demands for change will not be denied because a critical mass of the electorate has decided to do its bit to relegate this nation’s profoundly discriminatory status quo to the proverbial “dustbin of history.” 

The effort to thwart their success includes the widespread use of lies, smears, and a host of disreputable modes of intimidation and disenfranchisement with roots embedded in the era of Jim Crow racial policies, and robber baron economics.  Nonetheless, with each hour’s passage, it becomes increasingly clear that it is time for John McCain, and the system of inequitable privilege he represents, to move aside and accept the emergent will of the people.  We haven’t overcome yet, but we are well on our way to doing so. 

Power to the people, indeed!