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In a way, I wanted to let the results from Tuesday night sink in before I put fingers to keys, as it were, to describe exactly how I feel and my outlook for the future. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been elated, angry, hopeful, distressed and worried, but above all, optimistic. I’ve seen reactions across the spectrum, from the spontaneous elation that came on election night to the cautious optimism that followed to the anger and angst of disgruntled conservatives who have even threatened – as we did in 2004 – to leave the country for parts unknown (don’t let the door hit you, and good luck finding someone as conservative as American conservatives are).

As millions sat in front of their TVs waiting for results Tuesday night, my girlfriend and I sat in front of our computers, listening to NPR pumped through our home theatre system and wearing out our F5 keys refreshing election results. (personally, I was watching MSNBC’s election map, Yahoo!’s Election Dashboard, the BBC’s election map – who called states before their American counterparts, which was amusing, and the real-time map from the fine folks at DailyKOS) When it became all but clear that John McCain could never recover from the loss of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, when Iowa and Ohio went blue, when states like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, were at first competitive and then all turned blue on the big map (some sooner than others) and John McCain called Barack Obama to concede the race and subsequently make perhaps the classiest concession speech I’ve heard from a Presidential candidiate, and when it was finally over and every major network called the race for Obama, the entire world changed. When Obama got on stage and delivered the finest victory speech I’ve ever heard, we all knew the world had changed.

I could almost hear the sigh of relief from around the world, the cheers of millions of Americans. I could almost hear the music myself as people flooded the streets in cities across the country, cheering, chanting, playing music – street parties erupted from Washington DC to Chicago to Los Angeles to Seattle. Here in Washington DC, poor George Bush couldn’t possibly have felt very good looking out the window of the White House to the growing mass of people at the gates dancing, playing drums, and holding each other and crying with joy outside of his doorstep.

The world changed, and everyone knew it. While Americans partied, world leaders rushed to call the new President-Elect to congratulate him and warmly open the doors of diplomacy to him; even long-time American rivals like the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez offered to re-establish full diplomatic ties with the US and send an ambassador.

Back at home, my girlfriend and I held each other, tears welling up in our eyes, hopeful that our long nightmare of fear was over and that our hope for a better tomorrow had finally been rewarded. But where do we go from here? We’re ecstatic now, basking in the historic nature of not just a transformational and transcendent moment in American politics but also in American history, but the honeymoon will only last until the inauguration, at the longest.

The next day, my girlfriend was lucky enough to get one of the last newspapers on the stands in Washington DC, and the news was flooded with stories of people looking to find tangible reminders of the election of America’s first Black President to save for posterity. Civil rights leaders from decades gone by reminded us what a long, hard-fought battle it’s been to get here, the cost of lives, liberty, and livelihoods that brought us here, but made it all worthwhile. Political analysts of all stripes reported of an energized progressive America looking proudly to the future, and a disaffected conservative minority wondering where it all went wrong.

Over the next several days, the fog started to clear, and a few patterns started to make themselves apparent: a lot just happened, and a lot more is about to happen. Let’s take a look.

The “M” word

I hesitate to use the M word, even though by the time all of the votes are counted, Barack Obama will certainly have a mandate – he’ll have the highest percentage of the popular vote since Johnson, he’ll have shattered the old south by making even the lost red states competitive and turning a number of traditionally red states like Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina, blue. Even a last minute rally by Sarah Palin in Colorado Springs couldn’t turn that state red. For a while, even John McCain’s home state of Arizona looked competitive.

Obama certainly has a mandate – but it’s a mandate for change. There will be a number of calls for him to drop the hammer on a progressive agenda while the election is fresh in everyone’s mind, and while to a certain extent I agree, his real mandate is to change America’s course and fix the horrific mess he’s inherited from President Bush. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the stagnating economy, a critical lack of health care, climate change and energy independence, a middle class that’s feeling poorer every day in the face of an upper class getting away with murder – these are the changes Barack Obama needs to effect.

Some if not all of those changes will be painful, but the American people know this, and are ready for the sacrifices that will be required – as long as we know clearly and truly that we’re making progress and that we’re on our way, we’ll be more than willing to stand with him and walk with him through the wilderness. But to get where we’re going, we’ll need the help of those millions of people who didn’t agree with us, who were skeptical, misinformed, under-informed, or simply disagree with us – we’ll need to prove to them the way forward, and show them the benefits they’re reaping as we go. As long as the American people are engaged, informed, and undoubtedly assured that this is the right direction, Obama’s mandate will remain a mandate.

Technology

Obama traditionally hasn’t had a problem with keeping the public informed – his campaign embraced technology: blogging, Twitter, podcasts, and even now with the newly unveiled Change.gov, Obama has been eager to show the American people the bang they’re getting with their voting buck. As long as he continues this trend, he’ll be just fine.

Remember even a few years ago, when nothing enraged us more about the Bush White House (and enraged even a Republican congress, not to mention the Democratic congress after the wave of 2006) more than the fact that they demanded that we trust them about everything from environmental policy to national security without a shred of transparency? Yeah – that’s got to stop, and I have no doubt that Obama will use the power of the Web to shape his message and not just rely on traditional media outlets, who’ll defect from him in a flash and allow themselves to be polluted with his detractors.

The Losers

Speaking of his detractors, the Republican party is still eating itself alive, and I for one would like to keep it that way. In the past several days, a number of McCain party officials have been going on about Sarah Palin as the root of the campaign’s problems, but frankly, the campaign was having issues long before Sarah Palin entered the picture.

It was the campaign’s decision to add Palin to the ticket without properly vetting her, it was the campaign’s decision to pin their last minute hopes on a tax-dodging radical small-business owner called “Joe the Plumber” who ironicially symbolized the Republican party’s disconnectedness with the rest of America.

After their loss, they’ve been cast adrift in two camps (much like they tried to make work before the election), the social conservatives who still love Palin and want her to run in 2012 (my prediction: she’ll run, she’ll lose in the primaries, and she’ll fade into obscurity. This, regardless of whether Stevens concedes his Alaska senate seat to her now that he’s a convicted felon.), and the fiscal conservatives and social centrists (or even progressives) who wish their party still symbolized the things that made centrists and progressives vote for them, things that the Democrats now symbolize: fiscal responsibility, accountability, oversight, and transparency.

So now the Republicans will tear each other apart, the same way they did when McCain won the nomination, wondering what they should do now. For those of us in the reality-based community, and I’m not limiting that to progressives – I’m including intelligent independents and Republicans who don’t like to be deceived – we have a very important task at hand: stay vigilant. The right-wing talk radio machine is already at it; spouting lies and hate like they did before Election Day, right-wing bloggers are already crowing that this is the end of America as we know it, conservatives are threatening to flee the country, and those cries of desperation will only increase after Inauguration Day and as we move into an Obama Presidency.

The right-wing smear and hate machine will be back in full effect like we saw in the Clinton years, using every opportunity they could to smear him and every Democrat in the House or Senate that they could get to boost their own cause. There’s no reason to believe they won’t do the same now that they’re in the minority, and in fact, expect their efforts to step up now that they’re in the minority. (proof positive: this post was up for literally moments before the lowest form of life, the right-wing internet troll, appeared with a frothing mouth full of hate. I can’t wait to read more!)

They had a chance, they failed and disappointed all of us – they’ll try to convince us that this is all part of a political cycle (something I’m hearing from remarkably intelligent people these days), a pendulum that swings both ways, and any time we’re remotely unhappy with anything that it’s Obama and the Democrats’ fault and we should elect them next time. We can’t have that, and we need to check them on their misinformation – they’re best at it when they’re in the minority, and we need to keep up the pressure.

Some advice for my conservative counterparts: You want to know why you lost this election? Look around. Ask yourself if the past 8 years, culminating in the massive and critical failure of our economic policies, a flagging war in Afghanistan – the real front on the war on terror and the hiding place of America’s most wanted man after 7 years, vanishing civil liberties for Americans, have made America a safer, more prosperous place to live, and I think you’ll understand why everyone wants a change.

America is tired of a party that self-identifies with hatred, intolerance, bigotry, war, violence, and oppression. As long as the Republican party stands for this, even the hopes and desires of its most sensible members cannot save it.

Hopes and Reality

Barack Obama taught us how to hope again, how to believe in America again, after so much darkness. And he taught the world how to believe in us again as well. He’s inherited a list so long that I wouldn’t possibly want to be him, but he’s made us believe that he can handle it. I believe him, and I’ll stand by him as he whittles down that list.

The economy. Jobs. Health care. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Energy independence. Climate change. The environment. Foriegn policy, both bolstering our allegiances with our friends and opening the door to our enemies without saber rattling. Standing strong in the face of those enemies. Domestic spending. Crumbling infrastructure. Failing business. Encroaching poverty. Race relations. Equal pay for equal work. Reproductive rights. Sexism. Homophobia. Civil liberties and a restoration of constitutional rights. Crime and public safety. Regulation. The list goes on, and that was already huge.

He’ll need talented hands, and it seems he’s assembling them. He’ll need the support of Americans, and so far he has it. He’ll need the input of Democrats AND Republicans, and I have no doubt he’ll get it. He’ll need money from the American people, and he has mine, certainly. (An aside: I’m tired of this anti-tax, anti-taxpayer rhetoric that’s dominated the campaign – I would gladly accept a tax increase if I knew my money were going towards productive, solid, results-driven programs and policies that improved our collective quality of life. I refuse, however, to pay for airplanes that don’t fly, or bailouts that pay for “teambuilding offsites” at posh resorts while companies integral to our economy burn down.)

So far things look good, but the hopeful must be willing to stand beside him and defend him from attacks from those who hated him years ago and continue to hate him now. The attacks against him won’t let up, and he has a lot of work to do – he needs us to run interference for him so he can focus on the issues. That being said, we need to be measured in our expectations. The man doesn’t breathe rainbows or fart air freshener – we shouldn’t expect him to. The sun doesn’t rise for him, we have to remember that when we look and see the incremental progress that he’s likely to make on our behalf. We may not get to the finish line immediately, but what’s important is that he’s turning this ship around and getting us under way on the right course.

As a suffix to that, I say to President-Elect Obama and all of the Democrats in the House and Senate: keep your noses clean and out of scandals and the pockets of special interests. Keep on the straight and narrow and don’t give the right a chance to compare you to their own fallen members, people like Ted Stevens, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Katherine Harris, and Mark Foley. We don’t need another 8 years in the wilderness because of momentary pleasures. Do right by us and we’ll do right by you.

Mr. Black President

This week I’ve seen brave men and women cry. Men and woman who have suffered the hoses and beatings of a majority who hated them for no reason other than the color of their skin, of people who hated them without even knowing why they hated, and of people who even today still hate them. Men and women, black and white, young and old, who stood together for civil rights and equal justice for all who finally, after a long long road, have seen their efforts rewarded with the election of the first Black President of the United States of America. I’ve seen them weep, and I’ve wept with them. This new day is theirs.

A man holds the oval office who looks unlike any President before him, a Black man, now in the house that slaves built. And while his forebears did not descend from the slaves that I did, as a people, we all breathe a sigh of relief and tears of joy fill our eyes. He understands us, he understands justice, he understands equality, and he understands struggle. He will speak for all of us, whether we struggle because of our race, our nationality, our class, our income, our sexual preference, or our gender. He understands.

Even so, my fears persist. Some are claiming that this is a bellweather that racism is gone in America, that it’s all in our heads now that we have a Black president. Some say there’s no longer a need for programs like affirmative action, when this proves more than anything that it’s desperately required. Some simply continue to hate, openly and freely. The election of Barack Obama doesn’t change this – over the course of the campaign, we saw some horrible racial rhetoric come out for everyone to see, and we need to address them and squash them before they crawl back under the rocks and into the darkness, nipping at the edges of the light.

The election of a Black man for the presidency by the majority does not, by any means, change the fact that racism still exists in America. This notion, carried by the people who are begging for civil rights leaders and members of the Black community to sit down now that we have a Black presidency, are not just flawed, but malicious – these are the people who want to believe that because a Black man is the President of the United States this means that their privilege is okay and worth defending. The people who honestly believe this – that believe that this means we can now do nothing – are the most dangerous of all, more so than the people who are honest about their hatred and ignorance.

If anything, this proves that we must strive as hard or harder than ever to suppress racism and bigotry in America. If a Black man can be the President, think of how many more strong, intelligent, talented, and honorable Black people in America are being held back solely based on their race. If anything, the election of Barack Obama should reaffirm all of our collective commitments to destroying racism and injustice in any corner we find it.

Further discouraging were the myriad of ballot measures around the country aimed squarely at not just affirmative action, but also LGBT rights. A number of states codified discrimination in their constitutions thorugh bans on gay marriage or adoption (in the state of Arkansas, they amended theirs to not just include gays and same-sex partners, but ANY single person from adopting a child, thus depriving potentially thousands of children desperately in need of loving, caring, stable homes), and Nebraska simply eliminated state affirmative action programs.

Even while we bask in the light of one of America’s last racial barriers being permanently smashed, we must remember our brothers and sisters in arms, fighting for equal rights and justice for all people, not just on the basis of the color of their skin, but on whom they love. We mustn’t deliver to our gay and lesbian friends a divided nation like we saw, where gays and lesbians who lives in some places found an accepting life and those living in others faces a difficult existence echoing with hatred.

The election of Barack Obama proves to us that people can change when shown the light, and should redouble our efforts and commitment to shining the light of equality and justice from coast to coast. Our forebears dreamt of us, worked for it, and even today, as we dare to hope for it, we must continue to work for it. President-Elect Obama has committed to – the least we can do is join him.

In The End

There’s so much to do, and I really can’t wait to get started. It’ll be an exciting four years, and I’m looking forward to standing with our new President, supporting him as he presses us forward and taking him to task when he falters or capitulates to the forces that would take us back. I look forward to rebuking the voices of hatred and intolerance, and I look forward to amplifying the voices and causes of justice and equality. I look forward to our collective new day – it’s finally arrived.