For the Media

In writing for this blog, I have tried to emphasize the scientific. This is my job as a political scientist. Unlike journalists and casual observers, I try to focus on what can be measured, tested, and potentially disproved. This leads me to say quite often that there are aspects of the campaign that we just don't know anything about. We don't know if Sarah Palin hurt John McCain's chances. We don't know if the massive get out the vote efforts were effective. And we still don't know if Barack Obama's race hurt his vote totals. For these questions and others, in time, we will have measurements that allow us to attempt a scientific answer.

However, the most important parts of last night cannot be measured and they don't need to be. You know joy when you see it.

Perhaps the single most powerful expression of joy that I saw last night were the images of Jesse Jackson crying with joy. That encapsulates one of the most important aspects of this election in a way that science cannot.

While traveling around to polling locations in Los Angeles yesterday, I could see that the excitement and mobilization were palpable. In my own polling location in Venice, there was unabashed enthusiasm for the vote. In an African-American church that served as polling locations in the Crenshaw district, there was a somber energy that reflected the profoundness of the event for many casting their ballots.

But I think the image of Jackson best demonstrated joy. It was a joy that Jackson must have felt very acutely and was representative of what this election meant for so many people.

I think that Jackson would feel this joy so acutely that it brought him to tears because Jackson is so close to many of the events and one of the many movements that made Obama's election so symbolically important. Obama's election is profoundly symbolic for so many because of the tragic history, and modern reality, of oppression and inequality in this county. It is a symbol, not necessarily that these problems have ended or are ending, but a powerful symbol of possibility and hope. Jackson devoted his life to fighting oppression and inequality.

Some will disagree with his politics, but we can all understand the joy he must have felt in seeing such a powerful milestone accomplished in his life's cause.

Jackson is not alone in having devoted his life to the cause that contributed to creating the possibility that an African-American could be elected President of the United States, and surely a similar joy was felt by man, many others. However, I have to believe that the joy was particularly profound for Jackson, who, as a relatively young man, stood by Martin Luther King when he was assassinated.

It must have been a remarkable feeling for him to think that 40 years ago he personally witnessed the very literal killing of a large part of the symbolic hopes of African-Americans.

Now, he was there witnessing the election of a new symbol of hope to the most powerful office in the world. I can only imagine the joy.

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