The Obama landslide victory marks the end of the Reagan era, a fitting end to the dark age of Bush, and a hopeful seismic shift in American politics and culture over the coming generation.
The conservative reign seeded by the Goldwater movement in 1964 came to power when Ronald Reagan captured the White House in 1980. The twin goals of the Reagan Revolution were to rollback government as the guarantor of the 20th century social contract created by the New Deal and Great Society, and to reassert American imperial might around the globe in the wake of the Vietnam War.
The Reagan and Bush I & II presidencies—sandwiched by a centrist Clinton administration—culminated in clear wreckage: military catastrophe in the Middle East and a bankrupt Gilded Age market crash at home.
The Obama presidency will arrive in Washington facing a massive clean-up challenge: lift America out of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and gracefully end the Iraq quagmire (while dealing with Afghanistan/Pakistan).
But beyond the severe digging out phase, the Obama administration and the grassroots citizen movement that powered its rise face a far greater historic opportunity, and indeed mandate: to transform the political culture of the nation to effectively address the real and vital challenges of our time so badly neglected for 30 years.
The mission of the Obama Revolution is to replace the Age of Reagan & Bush with positive governance propelled by an engaged citizenry, while sharply redefining America’s role the world.
This is not a burden to place on the slim shoulders of a single man. It is the bold mandate of a new movement across our country that was mobilized this electoral season, which has been slowly building since the electoral heist of 2000.
Nor is this mandate a task for just four or eight years of White House occupancy. Just as it took the Reagan/Bush conservative movement a generation to reshape the economy and foreign affairs of America, our movement will need 20-30 years to transition to a New Progressive America, one whose hopes are rooted in our history and culture, and called forward by a world in crisis.
Politically, the far-reaching power of the Obama Revolution offers great promise. America is moving beyond what some pundits falsely describe as a Center-Right nation deeply divided by Blue and Red states and cultures. Witnessing the Obama and McCain political conventions and fall campaigns, it appeared on the surface that we live in two very different Americas. However, the trends that have driven the Obama Revolution to victory point to an emerging progressive majority.
The new electoral map of 2008 signals a tectonic shift of the political landscape that threatens to consign the GOP to permanent minority status. This includes the rise of Latino Democrat voters everywhere but notably in the Southwest, the growth of independent secularists in the Rocky Mountain West, and the return home of working class to the Democratic Party in the industrial Midwest. The growth of educated suburban voters and rising ethnic populations is remaking the once solid GOP South from Virginia and North Carolina to Georgia and Florida--and yes, even in Texas.
The 2008 electoral landscape also promises to bleed more blue in the coming decades with a new cultural maturity and sensibility. America is becoming a more tolerant population that can no longer be as easily divided and distracted by shallow appeals based on "God, Guns and Gays". The politics of fear engineered by the likes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove that have driven the mean electoral seasons the past 20 years seems to have exhausted their relevance to voters who can better discern the evil wizards behind the curtains—thanks in large part to the wise crowds and civic journalists on the Internet.
Finally, the once disciplined GOP governing coalition of neoconservatives, Wall Street titans, abortion activists, prairie populists and evangelical conservatives is busting apart into open warfare, and the irreconcilable differences may cripple the party the for many years to come.
All of these forces are shaping the new politics of the Obama era.
However, for anyone watching the jubilant and tearful crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park last night, and hearing the voice of our new messenger for these challenging times, the mightiest elements reshaping our politics today may be the most ineffable. Genuine hope, a new tolerance, a reawakening to the possible--these are the immeasurable but essential qualities that make a new politics possible.
Let us be thankful that we now have an inspiring leader who can lift our visions and, yes, help us to dream again.