What Matters About What Happened

I am still in disbelief and sleep-deprived from election night. I feel like I am living in a dreamy parallel universe where Barack Obama has won the election and my big brother actually sends me a text message acknowledging "u were right all along AND u r probably the smartest." I must be dreaming. I am elated. I am exhausted. And I am thinking-

Why does it mean so much that Barack Obama won this election?

The obvious answer is race. Little kids of every race and of mixed race can now dare to dream about being President someday. (Thanks to Hillary's historic run, girls can too.) In Obama I see the faces of the kids sitting next to my sons in school, and the brilliant kids I went to school with myself, some black and some biracial, just like Barack. Just like President Obama.

For older Americans, it is, as someone said, as if the country has been reborn. For me, it means whenever Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" comes on the radio, I start tearing up again. And that endless sea of people of every shade coming together in Grant Park - that's Barack's America. And ours.

On a smaller and pettier generational note: Finally, FINALLY - the Boomers are out of power. We can stop fighting the stale battles of Vietnam and who inhaled and focus on today's world with all of its complexities and challenges. Just in time.

Obama's election also marks the beginning of the end of Idiocracy (I can dream too, can't I?). Obama never talked down to us. He never tried to be someone he wasn't (except perhaps in that unfortunate bowling incident). He never dumbed it down. In fact, Obama would tell us not to fall for the ol' "okey-doke" when the other side tried to go to the lowest common denominator. He trusted us to be smart enough to get it, and he wasn't afraid to show he was a pretty smart guy too. As Obama said many times on the campaign trail, now was no time to have a "big election about small things." For once, we got it right and brushed aside the nonsense.

Apathy went out of fashion. Remember in 2000, when you heard over and over, "It doesn't matter if Bush or Gore becomes President. It makes no difference to my life." We know now how much it matters, in lives lost and in lost livelihoods. It matters. People who had never voted before showed up this time and their votes counted and they helped to elect the next President of the United States - because it matters. I especially want to thank the radio personalities - like my personal favorite Michael Baisden - who never let up about the election and the importance of having a voice.

At last, the Good Guys won. I was never so thrilled as when Clinton won in 1992 because it felt like the political shadow over almost my entire childhood and adolescence had lifted, and the sun was out for the first time. As my four-year-old son Mills says, "Barack Obama cares about everyone." That's it exactly. I have never felt that the Republicans cared about everyone. Not when they only want to win in "real" (read: rural white Christian) America and hold their election night party at an exclusive gazillion dollar resort. Not back when Reagan conjured up the "welfare queen" or when Pat Buchanan railed against gay rights and feminism at the 1992 Republican Convention or when McCain put air quotes around "the health of the mother."

When Barack Obama says he will be the President for the United States of America, I believe him. He understands that the problem is not that government has been in our way, but that government has not been by our side when it matters. He understands that we need to restore the social contract in America and bring back a spirit of national service. Of course President Obama won't be able to solve all our problems, but he can surely lead us in a better direction than that of the past eight years. He gets it. He's smart. He cares about everyone.

Amazingly, he won. I'm wide awake.

The sun is shining.