Election Night Fun

Given the vast importance of this past election, mixed with the zealotry of crazy liberal NYU students and the fact that this was most of our first presidential elections the NYU bubble in Prague was full of election spirit.  We were notified of two bars that were going to stay open all night to show the election.  The first was The Globe, a British ex-pats bar that was packed solid the entire night.  The second one was the not-as-packed, but still crowded "sportbar."  I went to this one, it had a big projection screen in the back as you can see above.  Wolf Blitzer was at least nine feet tall.  Aside from the crowd of NYU students there were four obnoxious Czech students in there Palin 2012 and overall red uniforms, as well as a single old member of the green party who was screaming something about Nader, I think.  It was actually a lot of fun to watch in this way, every time a new set of polls would close, the whole room started counting down and there were screams of joy with each state that voted for Obama and ominous boos for McCain.  I was pretty blown away by the lead that Obama had, I was very worried that McCain would have been right on his heals the entire night.  By around 3:30 (Czech time) and my third beer I headed back to my dorm to learn that Obama had both Pennsylvania and Ohio!  Then I was just a matter of staying up till Florida was secured, but no need, he was announced as President.  I have to say that the people in charge of Obama's campaign are brilliant.  For the web integration alone they are brilliant.  They did more for Obama and voting than P-diddy ever did.  The website was a beautiful display of ease, form, and function.  And its good to know, now that the campaign is over Obama will continue with this strategy,  he just started up his new website from the election on.  It was a pretty unique experience spending this election in Prague.  I can safely say that in the travel I have been doing that Obama is the best thing that ever could have happened for our overseas relations, it practically erases all the bad reputation we gained under W.  In my Modern Dissent class we were discussing some of the potential outcomes of this election.  Our professor, who was a leader of the Velvet Revolution, and one of the worlds best journalists, was telling us that his contacts (high ups in Arabic nations)  feel that Obama's election is Osama's death sentence.  They feel that America showing that they can democratically elect a minority will pull the power out from under the extremists and will actually promote democracy as a system that works and is fair.  Either way I do not envy Obama, he will surely have the most difficult presidency yet.  He must be perfect and make all the right moves, there is too much riding on his shoulders to do otherwise.