Yes we can. What a difference a day makes.

President-Elect Barack Obama.
President-Elect Barack Obama.
Yes We Can. Yes We Did.

My spell-check still doesn't recognise either his first or last name. They both have red lines underneath them, along with the "s" I use to spell recognise. Spell-check wants me to use a "z" in that word. Interestingly, of the three names the next president uses, spell-check has no problem with his middle name, Hussein.

President-Elect Barack Obama.

The record will show he did not carry Kentucky in his historic win, losing by nearly 300,000 votes out of about 1,790,000 cast. Still, he won Jefferson, Fayette, and Henderson counties, two urban counties and another with a sizable urban population. But he also won Hancock, Elliott, Menifee, Wolfe, and Rowan. Rowan has a university which may have helped. Wolfe and Menifee, along with Rowan, are in eastern Kentucky. Hancock is on the left bank of the Ohio River a few counties downriver from Jefferson. I've been thinking for years that Hancock, along with Breckinridge and Meade, would be returning from their Reagan-Democratic wandering in the wilderness. Hancock has.

While these are the only counties President-elect Obama won, he also barely lost a few. Bath County in northeastern Kentucky needed fifteen more votes for an Obama win. Floyd failed by 212. Franklin by 145. Knott, 448. Magoffin, 330. Marion, 247; Robertson 83 (of course Robertson is Kentucky's smallest county, both in size at just about 100 square miles, and population, at about 2300 people, and only 984 people cast a ballot for president); and Union, needing just 335 more votes for a win for President-elect Obama. Nothing the Obama campaign could have done would have overcome the 300,000 vote deficit, but there are things which could have been done to make the gap smaller, but that didn't happen. I had longed for Vice President-elect Biden to do a poverty type tour along the US23/US52 corridor in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Obama carried two of those states, although it isn't likely his victory came from the foothills of Appalachia. In the end, Kentucky never played a role in this year's presidential election. But, that's okay as other states did their part overcoming the shortfall here in the Bluegrass.

I'm still awed by the words President-elect Barack Obama.

I'm a Democrat and yesterday was a great day to be a Democrat. Today, it is an even better day to be an American.

Thanks be to God.