The President-Elect

Consider, if you will, what Barack Obama accomplished tonight. He won the largest number of electoral votes of any candidate for the presidency since Bill Clinton in 1996. He won the largest percentage of the popular vote of any candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. He is the first Democrat to win an outright majority of the vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976. His 52 percent will be the highest percentage for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and the second-highest percentage by a Democrat since 1948. And while a growing population means we hit this metric often, Obama will receive more votes for president in a single election than any other candidate for the presidency in the history of the Republic.Obama has won one of the biggest victories for Democrats since Roosevelt, and run an incredibly impressive campaign. And he did all this while being from a racial group that has been horribly oppressed in our nation, a racial group that was denied even basic civil rights but two generations ago, a racial group that has still not reached true equality even today.

It is easy to get lost in the symbolism of this achievement, to forget that in becoming our nation’s first African-American president, Obama has become our nation’s president. And that achievement is remarkable even without the racial component. Obama ran as a freshman Senator against one of the toughest politicians and strongest political machines the Democratic Party has seen. He beat John McCain, a popular, engaging war hero, the same way he beat Hillary Clinton, the popular, driven wife of a former president. He did it by working assiduously, keeping his head down, keeping his focus on the end goal, not the day-to-day ebb and flow of the campaign. His campaign gave a lot of reasons not to vote for his opponents, of course. But it also gave a good reason to vote for him — the idea that we, together, can spark a movement to make our nation great again.

It is not enough just to give people an enemy to oppose. George Bush was effective in riling up his base against the Democrats, and it won him elections. Or, you know, an election. But his presidency is a failure precisely because he abandoned his 2000 platform quickly, and had no coherent platform in 2004.

Barack Obama has made no such mistake. A vote for Obama was a vote for something — a new face, a new hope, a new vision of an America that goes back to its roots, that recognizes that we are not all our own creations, that we as a society are in this lifeboat together. And that we must work together to get to a safe shore.

Much will be made of the decisions made in this campaign; no doubt I will write a whole bunch. But ultimately, tonight, Barack Obama won because a vote for him was a vote for something. And it’s nice to vote for something for a change.