Fired up, ready to govern
Last night, at approximately 11PM, Barack Obama was elected 44th President of the United States, and – seven generations after the abolition of slavery – the first African-American president in the nation’s history. Election officials around the country are still tallying returns, and so we won’t know the final result for some time, but it’s likely that Obama will walk away from the election with around 364 electoral votes, and a six-point margin in the popular vote (which, at 52 percent, would make him the first Democrat in over thirty years to break 50 percent).
In days and weeks approaching the inauguration, and even after then, expect the pundit class to assert that this election was a repudiation of Bush, but not necessarily a mandate for liberalism. Which is, frankly, a load of bullshit. Barack Obama is one of the most liberal candidates ever fielded by a major party (on most items, Obama is in line with Democratic Party orthodoxy). What’s more, Americans nationwide broke in favor of progressive challengers: on the Senate-level, electing Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Mark Warner in Virginia (woot!), Tom Udall in New Mexico, and Mark Udall in Colorado. Similarly on the House-level, Americans voted in favor of solidly progressive challengers. In Virginia, for example Tom Perriello (double woot!) in the 5th District of Virginia (where the University of Virginia is located), and Glenn Nye in the solidly conservative 2nd District (Southeast Virginia) won tough races against deeply conservative candidates in firmly conservative areas. Americans aren’t looking for, and didn’t endorse, cautious, tepid centrism. No, they elected a progressive president, progressive senators, and progressive legislators for the sole purpose of passing progressive policies.
In the final weeks of this campaign, John McCain decided to turn this election into a referendum on liberalism. Americans broke strongly in favor of liberalism, and now’s the time to take advantage of it. Electing Barack Obama was the easy part; the hard work of repairing this country begins now.
