I am not an American citizen, so I couldn’t vote yesterday. But I am very happy that Obama won the presidency, as I believe that this president is destined to change America, and the world. This was the first time in my life that I cried for a political reason. Obama’s speech was inspirational, as it wasn’t a triumphed speech, but a “this is when the work starts” one. He even mentioned “the world” in several occasions in his speech, while McCain only mentioned “America”. Obama even mentioned how the world would be in 100 years from now, which is a big thing for an American president to say, given that in the past most wouldn’t mention things passed 4 or 5 years. That’s the big difference between the two candidates, and why Obama is important.

However, I can’t say that when I look at the election’s results from a 10,000 ft view I am happy with them. When taking the popular vote into account, there was only 5% of overall difference between the two candidates (5.7 million votes of difference out of 130 million votes). To my liberal mind, Obama just made sense and McCain didn’t. So having only 52% of the US agreeing with common sense, is still troublesome to me.

The only major city-counties that came close to my ideal election result (ideal as in, how it makes sense to my mind) are the cities I always loved: San Francisco and Boston. Both cities, voted ~80% for Obama each! These are progressive cities, liberal, and full of techies. My own kind of people. I feel blessed to be living in the Silicon Valley, near SF.

Washington DC also voted for Obama: an astonishing 93%. While there is a big african american population living there, it also has some of the youngest population, and people who work in the White House and see how things are running there on a daily basis. The fact that DC voted so highly for “change” it just shows how much change is needed! It’s a testament that something was wrong in the White House in the first place!

The rest of the US (with the exception of Hawaii, and the younger voters) was less impressive. Evidence to this are all the gay-related propositions (I think there were 5 throughout the US). All 5 results were against the gay rights. Even in California, which is considered progressive, the rural Christian fundamentalists voted for Prop8 (at least at 62% of the precincts as I write this, “yes on prop8″ is ahead by 4.5%). Most of the Silicon Valley residents voted against, but they were not enough. Heck, even most of LA voted for Prop8, LA for Christ’s sake.

So there’s more time that America needs to be as progressive and modern as SF and Boston are today. At least 20-25 years. The next generation that is.