Over the weekend all the talk was about how McCain had to win pretty much every battleground state that was still in play and how that would be nigh-on-impossible. But Obama has pretty much done that tonight. He has won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Indiana and is looking good in North Carolina. This string of victories shows just how good the Obama campaign and its ground organisation are.
Of course, talking about ground games right now seems inadequate to the moment. We have just seen America elect its first black president. A nation that has been tainted since its founding by racism has just elevated the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas to the highest office in the land. Race relations in America will be changed forever by this. Never again will anyone be able to tell a black kid that blacks don’t grow up to be president. A child born this year will come to consciousness not realising that it is unusual for a black man to be president.
Watching Obama speak tonight, my mind raced back to the night of the Iowa caucus, the moment when Obama became the favourite to be the next president of the United States. That evening, Obama gave—even by his own standards—a great speech, it was inspirational and moving. Tonight, we saw a different Obama—a more sober figure. But the different tone of the speech illustrated that Obama realises the greatest danger for him now is expectations running out of control, that people really do imagine that his election will lead to the oceans stopping rising.
Obama has many challenges ahead of him and he will need time to make progress. But just by his election he has demonstrated the power of America’s capacity for self-renewal. That is, even for those of us who supported that American hero John McCain, something to savour this morning.
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