I am surprised there isn't much more written about this---maybe it is just that so much has been written already. I have studied endless figures, and "knew" before the election what would happen. I could have actually made a log for every five minute chunk of the day in between the last entry I made and this entry. For a while, earlier in the day, I was nervous as Virginia, a state that had been polling slightly but consistently ahead for Obama, showed McCain 10 points ahead. I kept telling myself that this was just the result of rural countries coming in before the big cities did, but it did make me nervous. Each new state that had its polls come in---sometimes ridiculously small numbers---caused a frantic cycle of reloading on various news sites to see what it all meant. When it finally struck me that it seemed that Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina were truly going to do what had been predicted, and come through for Obama, I should have felt elated, but instead I just felt...confused. Even when I walked through the celebration on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, I didn't know quite what to feel. My eyes misted up, but I still didn't quite know what to feel. I did understand what the people were feeling around me, though. It would make sense that a young black person would be ecstatic about a president who shares their background, but the middle aged, middle class people seemed to be happy for the same reason. Although it remains to be seen how true it is, people feel that Obama shares their background, and understands them.
There are a lot of policy issues, and discussions about just what Obama will do as president. Much of this election was driven by that. Much of it was driven by other things, some of which I have written about before. Although Obama's razor thin margins in traditionally Republican states such as North Carolina and Indiana don't spell mandate, they do mean that we are probably thankfully beyond the Red State/Blue State cliche. Strangely enough, it was in John McCain's concession speech that I found the perfect one sentence description of what this election means to so many people, speaking about the racism that existed in America a century ago, when the idea of a black man even visiting the White House outraged people.
America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time
Many Americans are happy about this election because, even if Obama doesn't deliver on the promise that his political and academic credentials suggest, we have reasserted that America is for all Americans, not just for a shrinking cliche or stereotype of what Americans are.