Barack!

It was electric. Ballrooms A, B, & C at the Connecticut Convention Center were all wide open last night to barely accommodate all of us who were there to see Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. I went with library pals Bernadette Baldino from Bridgeport and Sandy Ruoff from Guilford. (Who knew? Bernadette has the voice of a nightingale, which I heard while she was singing along with the national anthem, sung by Sandy's state rep from Guilford.) The occasion was the state Democrats' annual pep rally/love fest known as the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner. (The manager of the convention center was a wreck because the Dems continued to sell tickets long after the event was sold out, about 1750, 200 more than even this enormous venue can handle, but this event is so not about the food.) They were all there--all of our state and U.S. reps and senators and wannabes, whom the likes of us we can usually never get near, but whom we were hugging and kissing and posing with last night. The scene at the Jefferson Jackson Bailey is always like that--awash in table hopping, pandering, posturing, all done in the glow of the glam from national headliners like Gore, Edwards, Hillary, and the favorite (until last night!) Bill Clinton. But Barack was something different. They'll be talking about this one as long as they've been talking about JFK's last whistle stop in Waterbury on his road to the White House in 1960. We needed Barack last night. He's young. He's handsome. He's warm, well-spoken, smart, and passionate. He's not a haranguer like his warm-up acts, Dodd and Lieberman. He's not a takes-himself-too-seriously type like Hartford's Mayor. Barack is the best of us. He not only got Sandy, Bernadette and I to our feet clapping time after time, but he got all those Democratic men and women with the old faces and the new clothes excited. They could stand up and cheer and clap and whistle and not be cynical or defeated or forced to accept yet another compromise candidate. For one brief shining moment last night, it wasn't about Malloy and DeStefano, or Lieberman and the guy from Greenwich, or cities vs. suburbs. For a moment, we were all in the palm of the hand of this young man from a city in the heartland, whose face looks like America, who is not tired, or cynical, or defeated, who made us feel like winners because he is one. Oh baby, what a night!