Change is

There's a fair number of people out there who - despite witnessing spontaneous worldwide street parties - are having a hard time actually grasping that this election really was about change and that more change is possible. That includes the vast majority of the Right and a decidedly small fragment of the Left. The former maintain that nothing's changed because we're still a center-right nation; the latter attributes stasis to Obama's centrism.

The Right is, of course, delusional, as dave has been busy (and I suspect will continue to be busy) documenting. The farther Left has a valid criticism, but misses the larger point.

While not discounting the change at the very top, it is the change in the attitudes and actions of the citizenry that is remarkable. Consider this: a presidential candidate spoke openly of sacrifice to the electorate and won. Before last Tuesday, there were very few people alive who could say they'd ever seen that. Not only that, during the campaign that sense of sacrifice was palpable - the Obama campaign ran on a huge and extraordinarily well-trained group of volunteers. Moreover, Obama carried professionals making over $200K - those who were explicitly told would have their taxes raised. A pluarality of Americans believed Obama was going to raise their taxes. They didn't care.

There's two things I carry from this - 1) A motivated chunk of the electorate understands the gravity of our current situation and is willing to sacrifice in order to meet those challenges and 2) this portion of the electorate now believes that it can rise to meet these challenges - after all, we just helped elect a black man to be President of the United States.

All of this is to say that in the past four years, a formidable, well-trained, and broadly-based left-wing grassroots coalition has matured. It will be mobilized to provide political cover for the initial pieces of the president-elect's agenda. It can be mobilized to pull that agenda a little further to the left.

There are millions of people ready to get to work transforming this country. Engage with them.

My hopes

After John Edwards bowed out (and in retrospect, wasn't that a bullet dodged), I was leaning towards Obama over Hillary Clinton. It was his organization that sealed the deal for me. Like the post says, it's "an organization like nothing I've seen before." The Obama campaign has trained thousands upon thousands of people on how to run a political campaign. It has networked self-contained groups of skilled volunteers. It has created the sense of community and urgency that is required to move a campaign forward.

Those of us working to elect Obama share a lot of the same values, and on Nov. 5, a potent political machine is going to wake up, probably hungover, with nothing to do. People have been given the tools - I'm excited to see what we can build with them.

[updated]: Great minds, yadda yadda yadda.

Community Queens

Thanks Chris Matthews! for at least being intellectually honest enough to ask the question: "is community organizer the new welfare queen? does community organizer have Al Sharpton connotations?"

Of course it does, Chris. As Chuck Todd and Mr. Rothenberg just attested to, most Americans glaze over when they hear the term. But for activists on the Right, "organizer" evokes "urban," "troublemaking," and, yes, ACORN.

We all know Obama has gained from bringing something of an "organizing model" to the national elections process. But we may have to agree with Todd and Rothenberg, that they may wish they'd left the discourse of organizers and organizing out of Barack's autobio.