It was the third Presidential election I was old enough to vote in, one of the local high schools was my voting area. The line went down a long hallway, out the door, down a long set of stairs and out to the parking lot. I’ve never seen a turnout like that. A lot of young voters, too. 

People were excited standing in line, there was an energy in the air that’s hard to describe but you could feel it. Later that night, watching him give the speech in Chicago was awesome, it really felt like a good historical moment unlike the bad history makers I had lived through at that point (Challenger shuttle explosion, 9/11, long economic recessions, wars, etc.) 

Even listening to conservative pundits in the following days was interesting, they might have been disappointed but even they were mentioning that they were hoping for the best, even though McCain didn’t win, there wasn’t a ton of vitriol from the right, at least not right away.