Yesterday, as the Preppy Roomie and I buzzed around the kitchen in our growing excitement over Election Day, we compared notes on how different this experience was from elections we'd seen/voted in before (she's only voted in one other one, the baby. I've voted in TWO!). She told me that she'd talked about the election with one of her first-year tutoring students -- she tutors for the student athletes organization at Boston College. Both she and her student, a young black kid from Florida, were voting for Obama; the two of them discussed the other candidates running for office in his Florida general election. It was his first election.
What makes me grin so wide about this is that this is a young African-American man, working on what may well be the first college degree his family has seen, casting his vote in the first election to see a major-party black candidate take the presidency. I don't know the student very well and I don't presume to make assumptions about his life, but I don't know if he would have voted in another election. And the fact that his ballot is winging its way to Florida where it might actually make a difference fills me with...
...yes, I'll say it.
Hope.
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