My gut tells me that the election of Barack Obama as President does not represent a significant shift of the political leanings in this country to the left. However, I do think that it represents a wide-spread willingness to reconsider political affiliation in the aftermath of the Bush-Cheney administration. History may eventually judge this election to have been the beginning of a shift to the political left, but it is far too early to say if that will come to pass. In other words, I think a lot of what happened on Tuesday was punishing failed Republican leadership rather than a fundamental shift of allegiance to the Democrats.
My view is that the country as a whole has not really come together behind Barack Obama -- yet. I think what happened on Tuesday is that a lot of moderate Republicans, independents, and first-time voters had the courage to vote for a relatively inexperienced Senator who represents the potential for real change and honest leadership.
Whether or not the country becomes unified behind Obama's leadership and/or Democratic policies remains to be seen. If Obama and the Democrat-led Congress fail to govern effectively, they will very quickly lose much of they have gained. Those states that turned blue Tuesday night (e.g. Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Indiana) will swing back to red very quickly if Obama and the Democrats try govern too far to the left. Remember Bill Clinton's first term?
That said, I am ecstatic with the result and tend to think that President Obama will be the type of leader who seeks compromise and pragmatic solutions to difficult problems rather than using ideology and divisive politics like George Bush and Dick Cheney have done.
I think the most important long term impacts of yesterday's results for America are (1) the symbolic importance of electing a person of color as President (2) the likelihood of a more balanced Supreme Court over the next couple of decades. But if it turns out that Barack Obama is also an effective President who makes good progress on solving our nation's important problems, that will be a terrific bonus.
I lost a lot of the respect that I used to have for John McCain because of the way he campaigned and because of his horrible choice of a running mate. However, I did feel that his concession speech was remarkable. That was the John McCain who many people, including me, thought the GOP had nominated for President. Too bad for the GOP "that one" was MIA for the past two months.