The New York Daily News published an article, "Election Day 2012: President Obama is the new Ronald Reagan," with an interesting premise:
In many voters’ eyes, the GOP, and not Obama, was behind Washington’s failures.
And now the President, who already broke a huge symbolic barrier four years ago, has the opportunity to turn a corner and write his way into the history books.
...
He has proven that we are not, as some pundits insist, a permanently center-right country that reflexively rejects the agenda of any Democrat who tries to take progressive steps forward (albeit through moderate means).
America is changing not just ethnically and racially, but in attitudes.
Obama not only saw this evolution coming, he helped shape it. He has not just moved the political needle for one election. He’s changing America.
I detest the idea that we're a "center right" country. Yes, I live in coastal California, which is not representative of the country at large. Yet every day, I see kids walking home from the middle school down the street. They're as diverse as our society, and not only as individuals. I don't see groups of AA kids, or Hispanic kids, or Asian kids, or white kids. Each group of kids, including many couples, that walks past my house is diverse. They truly seem to not see color.
And it seems as though many parts of the country are outgrowing homophobia and becoming more tolerant, even accepting, of their LGBT neighbors and coworkers.
(No, I'm not a starry-eyed idealist - our religious tolerance lags our tolerance for differences in race, gender, and sexual orientation. What will happen first, a Muslim President or an atheist one? Will I live long enough to see either? But I digress...)
So when I see the NY Daily News, whose editor-in-chief is the former editor of Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World, say that Obama is transforming us into a center-left society, I feel a lot more hopeful about the immediate future. Yes, the Obama Administration and the US Senate will still be at loggerheads with Boehner's House. Yes, we need to apply pressure to not accede with the "grand bargain" or any deal that would raise tax revenues by compromising on earned benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. But my fear of the growing influence of the Teabaggers is lessened by the election results - they lost and we won!