Oh, man. _The New Yorker_ put up William Finnegan’s 2004 “article”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531fa_fact1?currentPage=all about Barack Obama, and boy, is it an interesting read on this day of all days. It’s a kind of Rosetta Stone of Obama studies, so many telltale indicators of a personage we can now recognize as a future president. (One quick example: at that time they called succumbing to his charisma to work tirelessly for him “drinking the Obama juice.”)
There are tons of delicious morsels in this short article I could pass on, but I’ll just leave you with my favorite. (I remember it from when I read it at the time, too.)

Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, _I_ don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”

That’s right, George. By now even you know that he’s your _successor_. He’s the fellow who disassembled that ornery coalition you and Karl Rove cobbled together. That’s who he is.
_Update_: Finnegan has “expanded”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2008/11/the-distance.html on the unmistakable subtext of the article, never enunciated explicitly, that Obama could someday be president. That claim seemed too bold to include in the pre–convention speech article, but reality has a way of confounding our opinions of what is and is not too bold.

I already “mentioned”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/now-is-the-moment-to-recognize.php how stirring I found Super Tuesday, that chilly day when all of New York was debating the merits of these two superlative candidates. It snowed that day; I handed out Obama leaflets at my local train station in the morning and saw William T. Vollmann speak at the Chelsea Barnes and Noble in the evening (our campaigns are so long that that branch has since closed). As I got my book inscribed, I asked Vollmann if he was supporting a candidate this year (halfway expecting a loony answer like Ron Paul or something); he said he was for Obama.
My other favorite moment was hands down, Saturday, January 26, date of the South Carolina primary. I had spent the previous two months in Austria and I was traveling back home to the tri-state area. I had a two-night layover in Madrid, where I was going to meet up with a good friend flying in from London. I had experienced a trying few weeks and was relishing the rare opportunity for a little drunken revelry. My friend and I stumbled all over central Madrid that night, I think we hit 5 different places—if you don’t know me, it’s difficult to express how out of character this sort of evening is for me. We enjoyed ample beer and _tapas_ and engaged in conversation with each other about the primaries and the economy, and talked up a number of our fellow bar patrons (those who could speak English) about Spain and Europe. It was a grand night all around.
Between 2 and 3 am, we staggered into our hotel room and switched on the TV, which of course was showing CNN. We’d forgotten that all of South Carolina had voted that day, and the result—a mammoth Obama victory—was just breaking. We watched Obama give an utterly electric acceptance speech, and drifted off to sleep knowing that the race had just changed significantly.
A couple of days ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates “posted”:http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/the_moment_i_went_all_in.php a YouTube clip of that speech, calling it “the moment [he] went all in.” I was already all in, but it’s really instructive to watch that speech again. We’ve all become accustomed to the power of Obama’s rhetoric, but repetition has rubbed the edges off it a bit. On this night, the difference was the audience, going completely bonkers at every pause or cue. They knew that they had upended the entire primaries. I’ll be honest, Obama’s loss in New Hampshire shook me (although it apparently “didn’t shake”:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/11/04/in-which-i-empty-out-my-obama-notebook.aspx Obama’s team much, as Ryan Lizza would discover), and I was getting dispirited by the rough tactics of the Clinton team. But to watch this speaker speak to this audience, you’d never know that there was anything to worry about.

As the long night wore on, I became increasingly dependent on my streaming MSNBC. I took a bunch of screen captures, which I thought I would share here. (I’m sure I’m not the only one doing this.)

Hillary.
I mean, wow.
She was as good as her word, and then some. There’s something almost novelistic about the position she found herself in. A figure of such polarization, loathed by the right wing and even loathed among plenty of Obama supporters for a brief period (now over, one hopes!), obliged to support her rival, about whom she surely had and perhaps still has profound doubts, in a situation that lent itself to scurrilous speculation (she wants to run in 2012!), leading to a triumphant outcome in which her own contributions proved to be scandalously underemphasized—that’s some weighty stuff, right there.
You have to feel for her. She deserves the unmitigated thanks of every Obama supporter. One always knew that her support for the liberal project was unquestioned, and she proved that in every way one could possibly want every single day for the last few months. She is a champ.
So what is Hillary’s fate, now? I hope it is Senate Majority Leader, if she wants that role; I assume she does. I do think that she has the mind, nerve, DNA of a legislator right down to her very core; freed from the burdens of perennially preparing for her next presidential run, I fully expect her to fulfill the greatness that everyone knows her capable of.
David Remnick “said”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/remnick-the-conservative-era-i.php that the Obama-Clinton battle of spring 2008 “is something we’re going to be talking about and thinking about for a long, long time.” I think that’s absolutely correct. My favorite moment of that race was Super Tuesday, February 5, when New York and a host of other states took to the ballot box, and all of New York City was pitched on the razor’s edge, unable to decide between the two candidates, a dynamic captured to perfection by Seth’s flippable “Eustace Tilley cover”:http://theispot.net/arttalk/seth/sethcover.jpg, which came out a couple of days before.