Chris at Afro-Netizen gives you his close up impression of one of his hometown politicians.

"So, how does it feel?"

This is the question I asked rising star, State Senator Barack Obama, tonight after his triumphal debut as U.S. senator-to-be from the great state of Illinois.

Upon recognizing my voice, Brother Senator (as I will call him henceforth) turned a bit to make eye contact with me and give me that easy, familiar smile. He stopped a moment, looked at me intently through the dark richness of the music-filled room as though the sway of the people encircling him was a mere summer breeze, and simply said: "It's good." Not a rote: "It's all good," but more like good in the sense of goodness.

Goodness, no doubt, radiating from the collective surge of pride toward a man who made the more jaded and disaffected among us Blackfolk feel a sense of hope, optimism, and dare I say belonging to a political party still a shadow of its former self since the tragic rise of the New Democrat. Not ironically, Brother Senator became the embodiment and most compelling messenger of what Howard Dean's "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" rhetoric sought to reveal without the need to say so explicitly. The poignant authenticity of his personal narrative transcended what other speakers had to spell out with expressly ideological language.