What happened on the first Tuesday of November 2008 was so significant that I cannot take its full measure. Better to focus on bits and pieces:
• I worried a lot about his campaign but, in retrospect, Obama’s landslide seems inevitable. Economy in crisis. Optional war sold on lies, carelessly waged, profitably privatized. Incredible incompetence. Organized corruption. White House vs. the Constitution. What sane citizen wouldn’t vote for change?
• Deep down, below the issues, the campaign offered a clear, simple choice. Republicans banged drums of fear -– fear terrorism, fear socialism, fear Obama. He preached possibilities.
• Issues mattered, though. McCain clung to economic orthodoxy, promoting the (mythical) free market and free trade as well as lower taxes on business and the wealthy to spur enterprise and create jobs. But financial meltdown happened, bringing doubt even to that noted Defender of the Faith, Alan Greenspan, and skepticism trickled all the way down to voters on Main Street.
• Before Obama brings change he will have to overcome an Establishment campaign to neuter him. Even as it reported election results Nov. 5, the New York Times ran a “news analysis” suggesting President Obama should govern from the center wherein the writer Patrick Healey quoted no fewer than three Republican political strategists. A veteran of Mitt Romney’s primary race, Kevin Madden, said: “Obama won mainly because he convinced voters he was a centrist, schooled and accomplished in the politics of moderation.”
No, he didn’t, but that distortion -– like the “news analysis” itself — was predictable. Even before Tuesday, the Concord Coalition blared its balanced budget fundamentalism and tore its hair about the cost of entitlements while failing to pushback as the Bush Administration unbalanced budgets to Kingdom Come. Listen for screams about Democrat Obama’s deficits unless he knuckles under.
Understand –- the only way Obama can approach a balanced budget is to abandon his domestic agenda, including health care reform, and cut existing social spending. That explains why the Establishment -– which includes rhetorically “liberal” news organizations like the Times and the Washington Post –- will demand what they call fiscal prudence from Obama. It’s how they turned Bill Clinton into a moderate Republican.
Anything to prevent left-of-center government!
• Obama won in a landslide. He has a mandate to revive the economy (and a modicum of economic justice) by re-regulating markets, restoring progressive taxation, moving toward universal health insurance and investing in new sources of energy to kick both our fuel habits –- foreign and fossil.
• Judging from my experience, the praise for Obama’s organization is deserved. I always vote on Election Day, the way God intended, so I was open to serious punishment -– a lengthy procession of money appeals, live and robocalls –- Governor Richardson, no need to shout –- even visits to get me to vote early. After that came fliers, emails and door knob doodads, plus new calls ending only late on Nov. 4. Admirable overkill.
• Nice to see the Democrats outspend the GOP, but Obama’s rejection of public financing will help corporate America continue to buy profits. Consider the lead paragraph of Robert Pear’s Oct. 13 New York Times story:

“After favoring Republicans by a ratio of more than two to one for most of the last decade, pharmaceutical companies and others in the health care industry are now splitting their contributions evenly between the two major parties, campaign finance reports show.”

• A Berlin woman, 40, uplifted by Obama’s election but sober, told the Times: “I’m preparing myself for the fact that peace and happiness are not going to suddenly break out,” she said. That’s mature.
Still, we elected a guy who aspires to rationality. A guy who in reciting Dr. King’s “I promise you, we as a people will get there” Tuesday night expanded the “we” to include all of us.
So it feels good right now to be American and I plan to bask in it for a while. There will come a time for realism.