by Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
The sense of euphoria was palpable once the networks called Pennsylvania and then Ohio for Barack Obama.
Pennsylvania, a traditionally Democratic state, was a prime target of Sen. John McCain in the waning days of the presidential race, a state his campaign was said to need if he were to have any chance of winning the White House.
Polls closed in Pennsylvania at 8 p.m. and results were called within about 40 minutes. Sen. McCain’s road to the White House was narrowing.
At about 9:30, however, about a half hour after polls closed in Ohio, his road was blocked and it appeared highly likely that Sen. Obama, the Illinois Democrat, would win the White House, becoming the first African-American to be elected to the nation’s highest office.
It was a historic moment, one in which the TV commentators seemed to get caught up, their objectivity eroding as it became clear what we were witnessing. Sen. Obama — now President-elect Obama — began rolling up wins in state after state, capturing the former Republican bastions like Virginia and Indiana and moving GOP-leaning states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida, building a surprisingly broad coalition.
Even as I watched the images of chanting, dancing crowds in Chicago, I couldn’t help wonder how the president-elect would rise above the nastiness of the campaign.
Glenn Loury, a professor of social sciences and economics at Brown University, speaking on “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on Friday, said he was concerned that many of the ugliest moments in this campaign were likely to have a life “after the election.”
”Should Obama win,” he said before the election, “now you have a president of the United States who a lot of people think is illegitimate as a person who consorts with murderers, as a person who’s sympathetic to terrorists. It’s de-legitimating of the president of the United States. It’s poisoning the well in a certain way.”
That poisoned well, he said, then makes it difficult to govern, because “what has been said about (a candidate) continues to echo in the minds of citizens.”
”I’m worried that in this case the suggestion that Obama is somehow going to get in the White House and, you know, sell out the country will hurt all of us should he win and need to govern.”
That’s part of what plagued the Clinton presidency. Bill Clinton had to refight the 1960s’ culture wars during his administration, dealing with constant attacks from the right that left him tacking away from the more traditional Democratic base.
Sen. McCain seemed to understand how dangerous the divisions created by the campaign could be. During his concession speech, perhaps the most gracious and classy speech he had given since the campaign began, he called for unity and pledged to do what he could “to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.”
”I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences, and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited,” he said.
It is difficult to understate how important these words may be as we move into an Obama administration. Just as important, perhaps, were Sen. Obama’s words, which made it clear just how dangerous these divisions are, denouncing the “temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”
He cited the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, “a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.”
”Those are values we all share,” he said. “And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.
”As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours,” he continued, “ ‘We are not enemies, but friends — though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.’ And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.”
Does this mean he must pander to McCain supporters or scale back the liberal portions of his agenda to keep the peace? Not at all.
As both Sens. McCain and Obama made clear in their speeches — and as David Sirota notes in his blog entry on the liberal blog Ourfuture.org — the nation spoke clearly about the progressive direction we need to pursue.
Sen. Obama was victorious not only because of his efficient and effective organization — which is what the TV people have focused on — but because he articulated a progressive vision in a way that Democrats rarely have done.
Mr. Sirota said voters provided a “very bold progressive mandate” based on “the sheer size of the victory” and a campaign in which “the candidates (made) clear this was an ideological choice between Reagan-ism and Roosevelt-ism.”
It is important that Sen. Obama, when he becomes President Obama, make it clear that while he will listen, he also will push ahead relying on the mandate he has earned by smashing the “50 percent plus 1” electoral mindset that allowed the nation to fracture into hardened camps in recent years.
He must be bold. But he also must find a way to bring his critics along.
As he said, they do not have to agree with “every decision or policy.” But it is important that they “join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be e-mailed by clicking here. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.

