Dance takes a fond look back at Obama

As President Trump and his supporters celebrated his inauguration in Washington, people in Philadelphia got their dance on, too.

You might even say we partied like it was 2008 all over again.

At least we tried to.

It wasn't easy. One attendee at Friday's No-Drama Obama Party, sponsored by Pathfinders Travel magazine at the African American Museum in Center City, told me she'd been crying all day. Another said she'd felt as if she'd just gone through a bad break up with a boyfriend and was walking around with a sick feeling in her stomach.

Others expressed fear and trepidation. I could relate. I'd shed a few tears earlier myself, watching the inauguration proceedings and the transfer of power from President Obama to President Trump.

It's the end of an era, one that had made me so incredibly proud. I'm not just talking about the historic symbolism of President Obama's having been the first African American president, or that he and his family managed to leave the White House without a single scandal to tarnish their good names.

Rather, I speak of the many accomplishments of his administration and how it got us through the Great Recession as well as Obama's championing of much-needed health-care reform. It's disheartening to know that Trump really plans to live up to his campaign promise of repealing Obamacare, with only lip service paid to the millions of Americans who could be seriously harmed as a result.

It has been a rough several days. And it stands to get even worse, judging from the first White House news conference on Saturday as the new press secretary, Sean Spicer, accused reporters of deliberately minimizing the size of the crowd at the inauguration ceremonies, but photographic evidence, and Metro ridership statistics, appeared to support the reporters.

"I feel like this is just setting us back eight years," Sarah Meiklejohn, a 29-year-old executive assistant from South Philly, said Friday as she stood at the edge of the museum's dance floor.

David Palmer Fitzgerald, an auctioneer from Clayton, told me he feels scared.

Trump "seems to be sort of a separatist," Fitzgerald said. "He doesn't seem to be the kind of person like Obama was in being inclusive. Therefore, it causes me concern. And it's not only that he comes off to the American people that way but that he also comes off to . . . other countries the same way. That's the scary thing."

For a time, the partygoers focused on the last eight years. They purchased campaign-style buttons featuring Obama's smiling face and listened closely as Michael Days, editor of the Philadelphia Daily News and a former managing editor of the Inquirer, read aloud from his new book, Obama's Legacy: What He Accomplished as President. Afterward, a long line of folks waited for autographed copies.

Spirits brightened as a DJ spun a signature Obama campaign song - the Stevie Wonder hit "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours."

It was a pleasant reminder of happier times.

But you can block out reality for only so long.

"I'm here to keep from being depressed but it's not working," complained Katie Morrow, 35, a social worker who lives in Reading.

I understood exactly how she felt.