When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

If today’s drug laws were in force during the 1970s, Barack Obama might not be President.

In his autobiography, Obama admitted to experimenting with marijuana during his high school years in the ’70s. He then went on to college and law school with the help of student loans.

We’re kicking off our campaign with a “name our Pot Campaign” contest tonight during Late Nite, which starts at 11pm ET. We haven’t done anything like it since the Dick Cheney Poetry Contest of 2006. It’s a return to the “FDL Late Nite” of old, hosted by yours truly. So, please join us.

I see that my colleague bmaz referenced a post I wrote about a year ago back at Digby’s place, about how Obama the candidate was consolidating structures within the progressive movement – field, voter registration, fundraising, messaging, new media, organizing – into his Presidential campaign.