Yes, We Can

Wow. Just ... wow.

Interestingly, the people I have spoken to today who have been most enthused about the election results are foreigners. A young Turkish woman was ecstatic: "you don't understand-the American president is so much more than the leader of one country; this is wonderful news for the whole world!"

There is an optimism here that I have not seen for decades. Even the Man from Hope did not bring this feeling.

Of course there will be an inevitable letdown; it would be impossible to keep up this level of enthusiasm for too long. But for right now, it feels really good.

So I looked back a few decades, and today's verse is an homage to civil rights songs of a past generation (a generation, incidentally, who until a mere handful of months ago, did not dare to dream of this moment). As a folk song, of course it is designed to be added to--I know there are some very talented wordsmiths reading this blog: have at it! I was working on a couple more verses myself, but I thought I'd post this first.


The Fourth of November, Two Thousand and Eight
It was time now to vote, we’re all done with debate
And the turnouts recorded in every state
Were the most since this nation began
Tens of millions of voters all said “yes we can”.

They were gathered by thousands in New York’s Times Square
There were millions who wished that they, too, could be there
The results from the West Coast, they made us aware
That because of the race that he ran
We could all stand together and say “yes we can”.

To the thousands who gathered as one in Grant Park
As election returns tumbled in after dark
And to millions of others, he aimed his remarks
This humble, remarkable man
Brought tears to their eyes when he said “yes we can”.

After days, weeks, and months spent on needles and pins
There’s relief and elation when somebody wins
The truth is that now’s when the hard part begins
It’s time to put life to our plans
It’s a lot of hard work, but we can, yes we can.