Back in 2006, I had a little political argument with a group of friends over dinner.
I argued that the Democratic Party nominee would pick Barack Obama as the VP candidate in 2008. My dinner companions were unanimous in declaring how naive I was. “Obama as the VP nominee?” They laughed. “Impossible.” We actually made an informal bet, agreeing that the loser would give money to charity of the winner’s choice (5:1 odds against).
It’s now official: I lost the bet.
Not long after that, I wrote this less-than-accurate post explaining why I thought Obama would end up as the VP nominee. Among my other statements, I said “he won’t run for president, so he won’t get bloodied in the primary.”
Genius.
This was a little less than two years ago, long before Obama had declared his candidacy for presidency. Even a year ago, how many of us just assumed, as a matter of accepted truth, that we would never see an African American at the top of a major party ticket in our lifetimes? We just assumed we hadn’t yet made it that far as a country.
It turns out Obama had more confidence in us than we had in him.
Go Barack!
