Waiting...Hoping...

Endlessly clicking "refresh" on the results page is failing to make the Texas and Ohio vote counting go any faster, so I've collected some of my favorite recent links regarding Obama.

From Edge of the American West, quoting Obama advisor Samantha Power:

He’s acutely conscious of the loss of US standing in the world...and the need to recover it in a hurry, so first acts will be closing Guantanamo, renouncing torture etc., and trying to embed ourselves again back in the international system.

From Timothy Burke:

...this is very much how I understand some of Obama’s emphasis on bipartisanship. Not as centrism, but as a desire to reconstruct processes of consultation, to remove politics as much as possible from those aspects of governance that need to at least strive for neutrality, to firewall off partisan calculation from ordinary administrative work.

From Verbal Privilege

As appalling as our current domestic political shortcomings are, I cannot grant them the same moral weight as the terrible impact of American foreign policy—above all, the war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror—on people who have no voice in the democratic process in this country.

This is the first election I can remember where I've actively rooted for a presidential candidate, rather than simply against one of their opponents. After nearly seven years of feeling helpless and discouraged by the direction our country has taken - our willingness to spy on, lock up, torture, and kill in a misguided quest for security - I finally feel, yes, hopeful that we can change our course, and motivated to go out and fight for that change.

Currently, Obama is barely hanging on to a lead in Texas. Here's hoping it sticks...