Election Day.

11-5-08 SHORT HILLS: Barak always says exactly the right thing with the right tone, inflection and nuance. He is the first president since JFK with the ability to move and inspire with his words. McCain made a nice concession speech.

Yesterday afternoon I spent two or three hours at Obama HQ in Maplewood, NJ, with lots of other volunteers, phoning seniors, some of them younger than I, to GOTV and see if they needed rides or help getting to the polls. Most of the ones I actually spoke to had already voted. [I did hours of phoning for Obama the last few weeks, most calls just go to voice mail.] The mood at the HQ, in a union office on Springfield Ave, was hopeful, but anxious about converting the lead in the polling to a lead in votes cast.

Tuesday afternoon, Judy did a canine therapy visit to Covenant House in Newark.

“nick and i were in newark yesterday afternoon, to visit covenant house. martin luther king blvd was electric. there were obama signs covering lamp posts and trees. young people were on every street corner with signs and banners, waving and shouting "yes we can." cars were honking. the crowd gathered outside corey booker's ward hdqtrs was massive and animated. it was thrilling. everyone from covenant house had voted and they were energized and optimistic, for obama and themselves.”

I knew he would win when Indiana and Virginia were too close to call, but it was nice to see the west coast come in as predicted. It was exhilarating. Donna from Vermont agreed:

“Double Hooray! I'm in Cambridge with Ellen and Derek enroute home from London. We watched the returns together, and celebrated with champagne when the victory was announced, and even called Bruce in London where he was wide awake and very excited! I then went to bed to the sounds of celebration in Harvard Square. What an exciting, historic moment for all of us in this USA.......”

In the fifties and sixties, both political parties spanned the political spectrum. The Dem’s were a bit to the left of the GOP, but they both had liberals and conservatives who fought with each other within the parties. I remember a NYT Magazine article arguing that the two parties were not merely mirror images of each other. The presidential candidates: Truman, Dewey, Eisenhower, Stevenson, Nixon, Kennedy, were all centrists. The Republicans owned New England, mostly, and the Democrats owned the South. Republicans moved to the right with Goldwater in ’64 and the Democrats to the left after the riots in Chicago in ’68 with McGovern in ‘72.

The country re-aligned itself into the present Red-Blue as the parties changed to liberal vs. conservative. The nominees, especially the legislators, moved to the fringes instead of being centrists, creating and reflecting the ideological divide that presently splits us as a nation.

Will Barack, can he, bridge the fault line and be a unifier? He did change some red states to blue, at least for yesterday, but that may just reflect the demographic changes in those states, the economic crisis, and a swing of the political pendulum back to the left in reaction to the W debacle.

Can he? I think he can.