Obama fanning embers of hope
ing out Wall Street were not enough to save the small community bank where she worked as an executive assistant. “All the money went to the big guys,” she said. Only recently had she noticed the tourism economy in Las Vegas bouncing back.
She had hoped that the election of the first black president would ease racial tensions. Instead, she said, it seemed as if Obama’s presidency had “brought out the racism that’s in the country.”
Her 45 minutes in the crowded gymnasium cheering for Obama offered a respite from the otherwise nasty election season. Obama, his shirt sleeves rolled upandhis moodbuoyant, hit the high points of his presidency: 15 million new jobs, incomes finally rising again, Osama bin Laden dead.
“We have made so much progress, despite the forces of opposition and discrimination, and the politics of backlash,” Obama said as he