The mood among the  Democrats gathered at the Windsor Pub wasn’t anxious or nervous last night, but expectant. 

Marilyn Gaa, a member of the Democrats Abroad Edmonton chapter who organized the evening’s festivities, certainly reflected this mindset. “I think it’s a perfect storm,” she said, referring to the effects of Barack Obama’s ascendancy and George Bush’s unpopularity on Republican candidate John McCain’s campaign. “I’m really hoping we come to a happy ending before midnight.”

Some of Gaa’s confidence undoubtedly comes from reading the polls (she frequented fivethirtyeight.com during this campaign) but much of it is root in a steadfast belief in Barack Obama’s capabilities to govern. Indeed, despite Alberta being immune to nearly every other phenomenon predicated upon political interest, it has not been able to avoid catching a small case of Obamania. The room was filled with Obama T-shirts ranging from subdued to fervent, and even those more moderate were willing to supply Obama with generous praise. “He’s taken politics off of televisions and onto the streets,” said Dave Deephouse, an American who’s lived in Canada since 2001. “This is a new generation of American politics.”

Although the crowd had come expecting nothing less than an Obama win, and this expectation was being constantly reinforced by the CBS pundits who hoarily discussed the stratospheric impossibility of a McCain victory every 10 minutes or so, the night certainly wasn’t without excitement or exuberance. Sarah Palin was enthusiastically booed not only each time she appeared on screen, but also every time her name was mentioned. A crowd of raucous older women drinking Budweisers began an “O-ba-ma” chant after CBS called the election. A woman with a “God Bless America” bracelet yelled “smile!” and took an unsolicited picture of my somewhat bewildered face. A man wearing a shirt that read “Dual Citizen Ranchers for Obama” shirt explained that it “started as ‘Rednecks for Obama’ but we had to tone it down.” There was no shortage of enthusiastic Democrats doing the things enthusiastic partisans do when they win an election.

But as the night wore on and the result that everyone was expecting was finally confirmed, the mood tended toward a feeling similar to that which one gets after shoveling the driveway: relief that it’s over, and satisfaction at a job well done. At times, it varied in the direction of reverence — the room was quiet during John McCain’s concession speech (with the exception of boos and what I could swear was a light smattering of hisses when he mentioned Sarah Palin), and for much of Obama’s acceptance speech it was almost silent.

But it wasn’t as acutely celebratory as one would expect. If anything, it was complex. Americans are known to be a proud people, and this victory represented a symbolic break with a presidential administration that had reduced the esteem of their nation within and without its borders to levels previously unthinkable. America’s past is marred by racial tensions, and on this night its people had elected to its highest office a man who at one point in its history would have been considered property.

Obama’s victory undoubtedly represented many different things to the Democrats in the room, and it would therefore be difficult to encapsulate this range of emotions with one label. The closest one could probably hope to come is to use the words of organizer Gaa: “I’m on sensation overload right now.”