"Obama's Victory Ushers in a New America", Joe Klein, Time
"Indeed, there are — an army of them, untold thousands of young organizers operating out of more than 700 offices nationwide. And they have delivered a message to Rudy Giuliani, who sneered during the Republican National Convention that he didn't even know "what a community organizer is." This is who they are: they are the people who won this election. They were the heart and soul and backbone of Barack Obama's victory. They are destined to emerge as the next significant generation of American political operatives — similar to the antiwar and antisegregation baby boomers who dominated the Democratic Party after cutting their teeth on the Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy campaigns of 1968, similar to the pro-life, antitax Reaganauts who dominated the Republican Party and American politics from the election of 1980 ... until now. They are a preview of the style and substance of the Obama Administration."
"It is no longer a "white" country, even though whites remain the majority. It is a place where the primacy of racial identity — and this includes the old, Jesse Jackson version of black racial identity — has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy. After eight years of misgovernance, it has lost some of its global swagger ... but also some of its arrogance. It may no longer be as dominant, economically or diplomatically, as it once was. But it is younger, more optimistic, less cynical. It is a country that retains its ability to startle the world — and in a good way, with our freedom. It is a place, finally, where the content of our President's character is more important than the color of his skin."
The only thing left to talk about is the white working class voters that gave this election to Obama. Just so we're clear the people who have been largely ignored in the past handed this election over to Obama. The community organizers, marginalized groups of minorities, and the working class (or the working poor as they are now). These are people ignored or trampled on by the last eight years, and victory is sweet. It is time to focus on staff and the Supreme Court, and most importantly the possibility of witnessing greatness opposed to the destruction of the last eight years. I'm not naive enough to think it will be easy or perfect, but things are pretty bad to start with. Racism and hate still exist. But this signals there are enough people here who have had enough and are ready for those ideas to fade away.
