WilLaVeist.com

That’s the conclusion Cynthia Downs-Taylor and I came to as we watched in awe the big screen as Sen. Barack Obama became President-elect Obama. Downs-Taylor, coordinator of the Unity Campaign, had led the efforts to watch for voting problems at polls in Hampton Roads, particularly in minority districts.  But that was the least of anyone’s thoughts on election night inside the Holiday Inn in Hampton, where Virginia Democrats gathered to witness political history that many believed they’d never see.

Though I was wishful, I didn’t think it would happen.  In February, when many Americans had their heads in the sand about Obama’s race being an issue in the campaign, I doubted polls that indicated Whites, particularly White male baby boomers and older, would look past Obama’s skin color and support him on Election Day. After witnessing the liberal frenzy over Obama at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner and Celebration in Richmond, I wrote that “cognitive dissonance,” when people’s behavior and or circumstance don’t line up with their beliefs, was the explanation. In the end, older White men would vote their racial beliefs and fears, I wrote.  Soon after, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright hit YouTube , and race could no longer be denied. Even towards the campaign’s end, some McCain/Palin supporters began acting as though they were cheering Strom Thurmond for president in 1948.

But I also wrote then that in America’s history, dramatic social changes involving race, such as the end of slavery or the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, happened because “economic pressure was the key underlying catalyst for change.”  And so the refrain, “It’s the economy, stupid” once again could force America to do the right thing.

Obama, as his campaign said he would, won with a large racially diverse coalition of voters, primarily age 40 and younger. Exit polls indicate just more than half of Whites backed McCain. An estimated 137 million voters hit the polls, making for a 64 percent turnout rate, the highest since the 66 percent in 1908. Six in 10 voters said the economy was the most important issue. They were moved by a perfect storm: a Bush/Cheney Administration that led us into two terribly costly and mismanaged wars and the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression. Money woes buried racial hang-ups. Hey, whatever it takes.

I’ve been fortunate to have lived and worked in the states that McCain and Obama live. I observed them earlier in their careers at their political lows. I was in Arizona in 1991 when McCain was reprimanded in the Keating Five scandal and I was in Chicago in 2000 when Obama was trounced in a U.S. House race by incumbent Bobby Rush. If you’re an independent, like I am, both senators are the types of reasonable pragmatic candidates you can support. McCain got swept by Obama’s “righteous wind” of hope that was stirred by a disastrous Hurricane George.

Standing inside Invesco Field at Mile High, witnessing Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver, I experienced his cool breeze that hot summer night. As I watched him at the podium, I was impressed by his peace in the midst of that powerful moment. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do. It wasn’t so much celebrity worship in the packed stadium, but amazement that the dream of a Black president was actually at hand. Nov. 4 it came true.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Gaylene Kanoyton, chair of the Hampton Democratic Committee, said above the cheers at the victory party inside the Holiday Inn. “The interesting thing for me is that America voted in the first African-American president, not because of the color of his skin, but the content of his character. This is Martin Luther King’s speech tonight.”

Yes, it was time.

“Never, never thought in my lifetime,” Downs-Taylor told me with a smile. “Hey, God bless George Bush after all.”
Amen to that.

This commentary originally ran in the Nov. 11 edition of Port Folio Weekly, www.portfolioweekly.com.