Much has been made of Barack Obama’s historic victory over John McCain for the presidency of the United States. The rise of a black man to the highest office in the land is indeed a major event in our history, but have race relations in the U.S. really made the advances we think Obama’s presidency signifies? Think again.

Although dear ol’ Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation around 150 years ago, and the civil and voting rights acts  passed just under 50 years ago, most would argue that we haven’t made real progress until now. This election has been touted by many as the final and real end to the racial politics that prompted the civil war, but let’s check our assumptions.

Compare the map above, which appeared in The New York Times and shows which states went for which candidates in this month’s election, with the map below, which depicts the Union states in blue and the Confederate states in red (and the gray states didn’t exist):

Has much “changed”? Instead of a Union and a Confederacy, we now have a Blue America and a Red America. The divide is the same, the semantics are different.

Those who see the election of Barack Obama as indicative of a triumphant “change” in U.S. race relations are mistaken. If anything, this election points to the contrary. The idea of a black man becoming president is still unacceptable in the states that once called themselves Confederate.

The Civil War did not end because the southern states accepted their intolerance. Rather, the brute force of the Union states made southerners abandon their bigoted practices. These southerners are in the same situation today—but this time, the votes of the majority (as opposed to guns and ammo) are providing the push for them to accept a racially just outcome.

Celebrating the election of the first black president in U.S. history should not be overshadowed by these realities, but should give us some pause for what lies ahead. Not everyone is pleased that Barack Obama is our new president-elect and these folks will be watching and criticizing (and undermining) his every move. Obama may have won the election-night fight, but he still has a four-year battle ahead of him.

We can only hope that his term in office will bring about much needed political and economic change, but also, and most importantly, a substantial transformation that will end this country’s long history of racial intolerance.

courtesy Staten Island Advance

It’s been almost two weeks since Barack Obama was elected the first black U.S. president, and since then there have been “hundreds” of documented racial crimes across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported by the Associated Press.

Documented in the AP article are burned crosses in Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania and Hardwick, New Jersey; racist graffiti in Staten Island, Los Angeles and Kilgore, Texas; and a “Osama Obama” assassination prediction pool in Standish, Maine.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, a church under construction to house a black congregation was burned to the ground in the early morning after the election. While investigators have concluded the fire was caused by arsonists, they have no evidence it was racially motivated. The church’s leader has made up his own mind.

“I’ve seen segregation. I’ve seen Jim Crowism,” Bishop Bryant J. Robinson Jr. told the Boston Globe. “We’ve come quite a ways, but we’re not that perfect union yet. There’s obviously a remnant of that kind of behavior still being practiced, for whatever reason.”

Even more frightening, the splintered and ineffectual white supremacist movement has seen interest surge in the wake of the election. Two white nationalist Web sites have crashed because of heavy traffic, and a secessionist site has also had interest skyrocket.

These attacks follow on the heels of the racial epithets yelled at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies during the waning days of the campaign.

Throughout the campaign, the Obama camp stayed away from discussing race, and the candidate had to convince his aides it was OK to give a major speech on race after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright issue came to a head. But while there may not have been a true dialogue between the candidates about race, some voters had to reconcile previously held beliefs.

In Levittown, Pennsylvania, and other cities in the western part of the state, voters overcame concerns about Obama’s race that had been present until the final days of the campaign. But in other counties that straddle the Appalachian Mountains, and down through the deep South, racial questions led to increases in support for John McCain. Voter analysis by the New York Times found that less than a third of white voters supported Obama in the South, compared to 43 percent of whites nationally. In Alabama, 18 percent of whites voted for John Kerry. Only nine percent voted for Obama.

If some upset voters have no trouble expressing their frustration by writing the N-word on parked cars, others don’t object to speaking their minds to a reporter. In the Times article, voters compete for the Most Racist Quote Award.

“I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks. From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive.” — Gail McDaniel

One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more “aggressive,” while another volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House.

Conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh are crowing that the country is still more red than blue, ignoring the fact that the number of solidly conservative counties is steadily shrinking. And while Limbaugh says liberals “organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves,” he ignores places like Blount County in northern Alabama, where 84 percent of voters picked John McCain.

David Brooks, as moderate a Republican there is, worries the traditionalist arm of the GOP will cater to the base with more fear-mongering and suffer even more defeats on the national stage. An increased number of hate crimes can hardly be called a good start to rehabilitating the Republican image.

A funny thing happened after Barack Obama got elected. Everyone suddenly liked John McCain. His concession speech, they said, was a return to the “old McCain,” the one everyone applauded when he bucked the system way back in 2000 and challenged Republican front-runner George W. Bush during the GOP primaries. Everyone liked that McCain, and said he had disappeared during the course of his 2008 campaign. The narrative went that his campaign had been hijacked, the candidate himself had been muzzled, and another ‘they’—Schmidt etc. al—were controlling the “real McCain” and twisting his beloved maverick image.

The lovefest for the “old McCain,” began with the Alfred E. Smith dinner, and continued with the Saturday Night Live appearance the weekend before the election, where it seemed he was willfully poking fun at his attention-starved, power-hungry Vice Presidential pick, Sarah Palin. He seemed to be saying to the lefty American public, we’re on the same side, you and me. The McCain image overhaul culminated with this week’s all-in-good fun appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he joshed and joked: “I’m sleeping like a baby. I sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”

Perhaps his reversal to the “Old McCain” was calculated. But i think we’re just as complacent. We want to remember the “old McCain,” not the one who dominated the campaign, throwing out invectives about socialism and Bill Ayers and all the other wag the dog tales of woe. I call this pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia—that is, nostalgia for an event that didn’t happen at all and for a time that isn’t even over yet.

Sarah Palin, just a few days ago, remember, was a dangerous pick, a terrible hatemonger, a fraud dressed in a $150,000 wardrobe. Faster than you can say “community organizer,” Sarah Palin was tarred and feathered by her own camp, derided for supposed ignorance about world affairs—not knowing Africa was a continent, or which countries signed the North American Free Trade Agreement—making all those arguments about sexism in the media suddenly valid. Faster still, she retreated to her home state and gave interviews with the local reporters, speaking competently about energy reform in complete sentences, properly using the English language. Her look suddenly lost the slick polish we had gotten used to—her hair was a little frizzier, less done, her clothes a little more frumpy, and Sarah Palin, suddenly stopped seeming like Cruella Deville, and was almost….sympathetic.

Did someone spike my drink?

It’s happening with the rest of the Republican guard, too. Bush’s open arm embrace of Obama’s transitional period is being viewed as supremely kind—”generous”— as if he has any other choice, given the state he’s brought our country into. Never forget, these are the final days of his presidency, and Bush wants to be remembered better than he is certain to be remembered—as a total, utter, failure.

Bush’s cooperation with the man who will be President is being hailed as a monumental achievement; likewise, the rest of his administration’s images are being getting softened with this post-electoral nostalgic glow. Condi Rice, once considered by the left to be as evil and as fiercely right wing as her boss, held a press conference, in which she essentially praised Obama’s win as an awesome achievement that made her very proud. You could hear the collective liberal swoon. Awwwww. How soon we forget, it was she who helped pushed the Iraq War to the American public. After she appeared at the Glamour magazine awards with a new, fresh updo, Huff Post readers gushed, “I’ve always admired her for what she has accomplished. I don’t care for her politics, but she’s a great role model.”

They say time heals all wounds, but the didn’t mention that it can happen in seconds.

Colin Powell, too, gets a pass. After four years out of the administration, he’s forgiven for his unfortunate WMD at the UN moment, and we look askance at what those actions helped bring, because he endorsed the right man.

Pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia might be a way to feel less hateful toward our current administration and help cleanse ourselves of our dark thoughts over the past eight years, but we should never forget.

Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama and his family on election night in Chicago, IL on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. (David Katz/Obama for America)

In a quiet and somber voice that carried the magnificent weight of the words being said, Charlie Gibson announced: “Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States The screen showed a shot of crowds going crazy in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles-all over the country. After two solid minutes, I jerked up from the couch where I was sitting with my roommate and said, “Wait, he won? It’s over?”

My roommates, who are also African-American, were shocked into silence and didn’t respond. For us, the immediate reaction wasn’t jumping and screaming-even though in the ensuing minutes, we heard car-honking and gleeful shouting from outside. We just sat, dumbfounded, staring at the TV set. I half-expected Ashton to jump out and say, “Ha, you just got punked!” But this was real. The American people had spoken, and they elected their first non-white president. I let the reality of this wash over me. A dream that had started more than two years ago had been realized with the softly spoken words of Charlie Gibson.

Two hundred years of history had been shattered and America had faced the ugly specter of its past, overcoming it. The election commentary covering Obama’s massive sweep over McCain, McCain’s class-act concession speech, the man-on-the-street interviews with everyone from a steel worker to Dr. King’s daughter, were all kind of a fast-forwarded blur that came to pause when Obama gave his victory speech to thousands of supporters in Grant Park in Chicago. For this, I got off the couch and, like a kid eager to watch Saturday morning cartoons, sat with my face six inches away from the TV.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” Obama started.

Yes, it was. I’m only 19, but I still didn’t expect to see something like this in my lifetime. It was just some kind of crazy notion that I had never even bothered to entertain until a few months ago. How could a nation that was built on slavery ever come together and elect a black president? It had been 143 years since the end of the Civil War and 44 years since the Civil Rights Act. A few decades ago, a man like Barack wouldn’t even have been able to vote, and here he was addressing millions across the globe as the de facto leader of the free world.

Change had come to America. All it took was “two wars, a planet in crisis, and the worst financial crisis in a century,” but it had happened. Filling with hope and elation, I soaked in every word of Obama’s speech. It rang of truth and captured the fierce admiration of the thousands who were in Grant Park that night. White, black, Hispanic, young, old, rich, poor-they were all enraptured. Out of every part of Obama’s speech, there was one sentence that resonated with me the most.

“This is your victory.”

Those four simple words summed it all up. For as much faith as I had in Obama and his ability to lead, that was nothing compared to the renewed faith and awe I had in the American people. The young, the poor, the minorities, all of the overlooked and disenfranchised segments of the population across the country, realized the strength in their numbers and the true meaning of a democracy, showing how “a government of the people, by the people and for the people had not perished from the earth.” Two wars and economic strife had awakened the sleeping giant that was the forgotten, apathetic voter.

“It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep…”

It was our victory.

So as I listened to Obama’s speech, my heart filled with a new kind of the hope for the American people more so than hope for Obama. The people had spoken and they wanted change, Obama was just the messenger. My only wish is that this awoken giant will not go back into its slumber, but remain vigilant, mobilized, and self-aware.

This was my first time voting and one of the few moments in my life where I felt part of something bigger than myself. What I thought mattered and millions of other young people came to this epiphany as they organized, as they rallied, and finally, as they voted.

As an African-American woman, I do not believe in voting for a man because he is of a similar race as myself (I say similar due to his bi-racial heritage). Race is an ever-present influence in our society and, therefore, influences the minds of most Americans. I cannot deny that it had maybe a 15-20% influence on my vote. According to this CNN article, 20 percent of those polled say that race played a factor—in Obama’s favor.

It’s hard not to want to make history for civil rights. Yet in all honesty, I think it is unfortunate how much race affected the election because I fear that, not only has it put lofty expectations on Obama now that he has won, but that these lofty expectations, if they are not reached, might set African-Americans back in the game of racial disparity. Michael Jackson (whom I adore) is an example of an African-American who fell fro grace. He was the King of Pop for over a decade. Then, two accusations (not even guilty verdicts) of child molestation tanked his career and have made him a nationally understood joke. I don’t want that to happen to Obama.

What if now that “we’ve” gotten “our” chance, it comes back in failure? Sure we’ve got one Black president, but it doesn’t guarantee there will ever be another one, especially if Obama doesn’t follow through on his promises. It is much more important to vote for a man on what he can do than who he is.

I await his actions as President before I can make any judgment as to whether or not this was a wise choice for America, as I would for any other President. I would like to see what he does about the looming Social Security problem and about our collapsed economy. The number of people of retirement age in this country will be in a one-third ratio with the workforce that is supposed to support them by 2020. This means less social security benefits for retirees or more taxes for the workers. This will be a huge economic problem that has not been planned for. This is in addition to the fact that future generations are going to be paying for the recent bailout, the economic future of America is grim. Obama plans to cut taxes for the middle class, but that might be completely offset by these future financial burdens. If he can truly turn our country around and straighten things out when it falls on these aspects, he will be a great president in my eyes, not just a great Black president.

On Election Night, I caught up with spoken word artists, Sekou Andrews (aka tha misfit) and Steve Connell, to get their poetic thoughts on the Obama’s win. Andrews and Connell were featured performers at Obama’s California Headquarters celebration. The two artists created a special poem called “Obama Takes America Back” about Obama’s historic win.

Andrews and Connell, both National Poetry Slam Champions, are no strangers to political activism and worked with the Norman Lear “Declare Yourself” campaign back in 2002. For the spoken word artists, the political is personal. The very definition of democracy, of being a Christian, of being an environmentalist is changing. The duo discuss George W. Bush’s role as a great motivator and how fear caused many Americans to become politically active. Check out the interview above and their performance below.

Michelle and Barack Obama out for dinner on Saturday night.

The McCain camp scored one of its few victories over the course of the campaign when it labeled Barack Obama a celebrity in advertising spots that ran in August. The criticism stuck because in many ways it was true: Obama was drawing thousands of adoring fans to every campaign rally he held.

But now that Obama is President-elect, Americans can obsess about their new, handsome Commander-in-Chief and his beautiful family without fear of being labeled star hounds. On Friday, the Obama camp posted election-night photos of the family waiting for Barack to be declared the winner on Flickr, and the page wouldn’t display for a while as visitors eager to see the new first family overloaded the site.

The Obamas are getting the real celebrity treatment: There are now grainy photographs chronicling their every move. The Huffington Post breathlessly declared Sunday, “Obamas Eat Out For First Time Since Win.”

Barack and Michelle Obama are meeting with George and Laura Bush Monday afternoon for their first official tour of the White House, and Washington insiders are predicting awkwardness as Obama meets with someone he has spent the last months criticizing on the campaign trail. But while Obama meets with the exiting president, continues to assemble his cabinet, and weighs what policy initiatives to take on first, us lowly citizens are tackling the real issue the first family needs to address, asking “what kind of dog should Malia and Sasha get?” [Ed note—presidential celebrities are just like you and me!]

Obama addressed this concern at his first press conference as president-elect on Friday.

With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it’s generated more interest on our Web site than just about anything. We have—we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the—so, whether we’re going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.

Obama has been praised for running a brilliant campaign, but clearly he knows the real way to get into Americans’ hearts: talk about pets. Just Google “Obama family dog” and there will be thousands of stories and hundreds of breed suggestions for the Obamas to consider.

Even Bill Kristol is concerned a dog-friendly Obama will be an unbeatable president. Writing about Obama’s press conference, the conservative New York Times columnist said, “Here, in a few sentences, Obama did the following: He deepened his bond with every dog lover in America. He identified with every household that’s tried to figure out what kind of dog to get. He touched every parent with a kid allergic to pets. He showed compassion by preferring a dog from a shelter. And he demonstrated a dry and slightly politically incorrect wit by commenting that ‘a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.’”

A common refrain during the campaign from McCain and others was that Obama was an unknown. Now that he will be the next president, there is a demonstrated hunger from Americans to learn more about Obama and his family. What new styles will Michelle introduce? Where will the girls go to school? Will Barack follow through on his pledge to install a basketball court in the White House?

We’ll all be able to follow along as the Obamas make their new home in Washington. Some celebrities complain about the lack of privacy in their lives. But that doesn’t apply when it’s the president, right?

illustration Jack Davis for Time mag.

Last Wednesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, 47, a day after his party suffered its greatest consecutive Congressional defeats since Depression-era elections in 1930 and 1932, stated the obvious. “Nationally, the Republican Party is going to go through a Dr. Phil, self-analysis moment,” he told the AP.

But the Republican Party has been locked in a permanent Dr. Phil moment since the Iowa caucuses in January. The sniping between John McCain and Sarah Palin’s camp is just the latest (and maybe the greatest) showing of inner-party turmoil.

At a moment when changing demographics are favoring young and minority voters, the Republican brand is disintegrating—the once-solid coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security hawks, and social conservatives is unraveling. Young and minority voters may not have been the difference in 2008, but they were solidly behind the overwhelming Democratic turnout, and will be the dominant audience in foreseeable elections. But will they be receptive to whatever message the Republican power structure offers in the next four years?

The election of a 47-year-old half-black man who grew up outside the mainland U.S. might mark the end of the culture wars that has polarized every presidential election since the 60s. That was the GOP’s winning formula: separate the Democratic Party’s coastal elites from its working class base. Republicans employed wedge issues like abortion, affirmative action, and crime to split the Democratic Party in half and win. And it worked: Barack Obama is the first president to win 50 percent of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 post- Watergate victory.

There will be cries for the GOP to return to this divisive, but winning formula. But it didn’t work in 2008, and it wasn’t for lack of trying either.

The emerging Republican direction appears more conservative than pragmatic. The difference between compromise and obstruction will come down to how the House leadership shakes out—Minority leader John Boehner, 58, expects to win another term before inauguration day.

Republicans on the national level are still holding the bag for financial failure. The crisis exposed a rift among Republicans the likes of which we have not seen since the Gerald Ford-Ronald Regan contests in 1976. On the one side, the Young Turks like Rep. Eric Cantor, 45, who wish it was Reaganland all over again, are going to war against spending and taxes. On the other side, are the moderates, like Rep. Adam Putnam, 34, who favored the White House, Senate, and House-endorsed $750 billion rescue legislation.

The bailout legislation is like a scarlet letter for Republican representatives. Those who voted for it are resigning from leadership. Rep. Putnam resigned from the party’s No. 3 leadership position, but Rep. Cantor is likely to be promoted to the No. 2 spot despite engineering that legislation’s initial defeat. Rep. Roy Blunt, 58, formerly the No. 2, resigned Thursday saying—in so many words—that Republicans are losers.

Cantor, Blunt and Boehner have thrown down over leadership roles before, and we can expect a juicy power-grabbing sequel in the 111^th Congress.

Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans are a lonely lot, losing six Senate seats, and maybe more in Georgia and Minnesota. And unlike their House counterparts, senators may be more willing to deal with Democrats. For former red state Republican senators like Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, the new and bluer 2008 electoral map is a brave new world. Republican senators are unlikely to rally behind conservative initiatives rebuking President Obama’s policies, fearing that they will be out of touch with the folks back home.

The Republican Party will likely lurch further right before it comprises or disintegrates, with the House leading the way on the national level. The American Spectator endorsed the fiscal conservatives and defense hawk old guard. Blogger Michelle Malkin demanded Republicans obstruct Democrats no matter the cost. Lou Dobbs won’t shut up about immigration, and McCainiacs rallied against the news media. At the grassroots level things are even worse—activists are turning clocks back to (surprise!) 1980 and siding with Palin. But what about governors not named Sarah? Why isn’t anybody talking about them?

While the national Party is figuring out what do to, governors are quietly experimenting with new Republican mantras. Largely independent from the national head-scratching, governors understand representative government boils down to delivering goods and services.

“‘The other side is worse’ is not a very inspiring bumper sticker,“ said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, 37. “We’ve got…to apply our principles to the issues that affect people’s lives.” Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—a moderate (yes, really)—says the 2010 elections will provide a debut for a “conservative agenda [that] can be shown at the state level regarding education, health care and environmental policy.

“We can’t be anti-Hispanic, anti-young person, anti-many things and be surprised when we don’t win elections,” Gov. Bush, 55, said.

But Gov. Bush and Gov. Jindal’s messages are in stark contrast to the House and the grassroots movements’ direction.

Both Govs. Bush and Jindal are in the one region where Republican enthusiasm was high. Turnout was strongest in a crescent that swept from Louisiana to South Carolina. If Republicans are going to get any new ideas, they should start looking, like they have since Barry Goldwater, in the South.

“The South is beginning to look less like the firm foundation of a national Party than the embattled redoubt of a regional one,” middle-America soothsayer George Will wrote.

When the next Congress convenes, 43% percent of the likely 44 Republican senators will be from the South (including Oklahoma and Kentucky).

Essentially the party of Lincoln is over. The party of Nixon’s culture wars will only succeed if the Obama administration fails, and the party of Reagan adheres to its ultra conservative roots despite its 30-year dominance in government.

Yes, even a few days after D-Day there is movement for 2010 and beyond. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 61, has re-activated his PAC, there are more Sarah Palin secrets coming down the pike, and Gov. Jindal is the keynote speaker at a major league conservative Christian fundraising ordeal on Nov. 22 in Iowa. Gotta love caucuses.

As you read this, the story of President Barack Obama is indelibly inked into the nation’s biography. The audacity of Obama is as much a part of the American story as the honesty of Lincoln, the courage of Washington, the vision of FDR. The phrase “Yes We Can” is as ingrained in our lore as “four score and seven years ago” or “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Three words. So simple you may miss their importance. But at the time he first spoke them, they were nothing short of revolutionary.

When President Obama was still a new face and an “exotic” candidate, he was beaten pretty badly in a primary Presidential race by a powerful opponent. Some people were shocked. Some said it proved the doubters right. Many predicted he would never recover. But he was undaunted. And on a frozen New Hampshire night, he looked into the eyes of America and said “Yes We Can.”

And with those three words, this man we barely knew, with a name we couldn’t pronounce, who looked different from what we’d come to expect touched the very core of what it means to be American. America responded because those three words are in our DNA, and watching this man speak, we had no doubt that it was true: Yes We Can.

President Obama was born at a time when many African Americans were still unable to vote. He was raised without his father, and at times there wasn’t enough money for food. Many mornings, when he lived overseas, he had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to study, just to keep up with American children his age.

He succeeded by being fearless and focused, graceful and true to himself. As a community organizer, Harvard lawyer, Constitutional scholar and state and federal senator, Barack Obama followed his heart. He worked for others. His vocation always followed his passion.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama was advised to wait. It was not his turn. He was inexperienced. Then, when he became successful, he was attacked from every angle-some said he was “too black.” Others said he was “too white”- some feared he was too conciliatory to those who disagreed with him; others accused him of being too partisan. Finally, people resorted to spreading lies and calling him every name in the book. But Barack Obama was calm, confident, and clear about his purpose.
Like President Obama, you too may be judged unfairly in this life. You will be embraced by some and rejected by others based on the color of your skin, the way you speak, or the clothes you wear. You may be labeled too young, too old, too short or tall or simply misguided. Some people may even try to dictate how you worship or whom you love. You will lose before you win.

And when you encounter those doubts, setbacks, even ridicule, you will understand the power of those three words.

Yes We Can means you will never be denied opportunity. Nothing will be out of reach. Yes We Can means you are not alone in your journey. If you listen to others, you will achieve more together than separately. Yes We Can means audacity and ingenuity beat inertia and trepidation every time.

Yes We Can prompted your great grandparents to risk everything and come to this country, weather the Great Depression, and prosper when the odds were against them. Yes We Can enabled both your grandfathers to face down death in a foreign war even as many in their homeland had disowned them. They never accepted failure as an option, they never stopped loving their country, and they never stopped believing in those three words. Yes We Can belongs to you because you’ve inherited it from all who came before you. You are the soldier, the businessman, the farmer, the teacher, the explorer. You are an American.

Americans dream big, follow-through, solve problems, and never quit. Americans are not always right, but they are resilient. Americans have a plurality of beliefs, but we hold these three words in common: Yes We Can.

As of this writing, your mother and I haven’t met you yet—we haven’t seen the color of your eyes or smelled your baby skin or heard your laugh-but we know you. And we know that every question has just one answer: Yes We Can.

Republicans come into the new year down, but not out.

Stoic Republicans huddled together at the Hyatt-Regency in Irvine on election night, rallying themselves for at least two years “in the wilderness” of American politics.

Scott Baugh, Chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, told the crowd, “When Barack Obama and the Democrats are right, we will support them, but when Barack Obama and the Democrats are not right, we will offer a positive alternative that stands up for families and taxpayers.”

Baugh closed by saying, “To all the Democrats who won, including Barack Obama, we say lease, don’t buy, because in two years the Republican party will be back.”

The overwhelming Republican defeat on Tuesday (losing six Senate seats, 17 House seats, and the presidency) didn’t come as a surprise to attendees of the ironically-named “Victory 08 Election Night Party.” “I came here to commiserate with my friends,” one attendee said.

Yet, despite the changing national winds, Orange County, “The Most Republican County in America,” managed to  re-elect Congressman Dana Rohrabacher on Tuesday, against a challenger Baugh called “a liberal, Democrat, communist, not-nice lady.”

Vitriol against the now-dominant Democrats was surpassed only by anger at Republican leadership of the past few years.

Rohrabacher, who supported Mitt Romney in the primaries, railed against the “elistist” policies of George Bush, Karl Rove, and John McCain. “This administration, and McCain, did not represent the heart and soul of the Republican party,” he said.

He called party leadership “half-hearted,” and criticized McCain for not taking on illegal immigration in this election cycle. “Do not despair,” he told his constituents, “tonight’s rout was not a rejection of fundamental Republican principles or values. It was a rejection of our Republican leadership.”

He accused the Republicans of “paying lipservice to fundamental values and fundamental issues,” including illegal immigration, which he has been a vocal critic of throughout his career, and also the “one-way free trade policy” with China. “If we are on the side of the American people, why are we ignoring one of the most important issues to the well-being of our fellow citizens?” He asked.

The Republican throw-down was peppered with encouragement to the crowd that the times are a-changin’, and the future of the party is the future of the country. “We have to talk about what we’re going to do to save America,” Rohrabacher insisted.

Scott Baugh of the Cali GOP

“If we don’t face reality, we are going to see, not only our party not go anywhere, but our country and our fellow countrymen suffer greatly,” he said. In response to a  question about the statement, he specified that “the very far-left policies of Obama are going to cause great problems for our country, and his national security policies will put us in jeopardy.”

Then again, he also said that it was a mistake to nominate George W. Bush “the first time.”

Rohrabacher’s message to the party was hopeful. He ended his speech by saying, “We are the heart and soul of the Republican party… and we are going to save America from the road they have put us on.”

With all the results in, the other big story in last week’s momentous election, was the successful passing of the three marriage amendments on state ballots this year, which amended state constitutions in Arizona, California, and Florida and defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

In California, black voters came out in record numbers to support Barack Obama. They supported Proposition 8, California’s marriage amendment proposition, in large numbers as well.

According to the 2004 exit poll, approximately 700,000 blacks voted in that year’s presidential election, making up six percent of the electorate. In this most recent election, that percentage climbed to 10 percent, or just over one million voters. This would mean an additional 210,000 pro-Proposition 8 votes.

The measure passed by approximately 500,000 votes.

Deborah Mayes, a 50-something African American from Los Angeles, worked to get the measure passed. She and other members from her church, the Zoe Christian Fellowship, made phone calls and knocked on doors.

“I believe in traditional values. I prayed for it to pass,” Mayes told Pop + Politics.

Mayes is also a supporter of Barack Obama, and was thrilled when he got elected.

“I voted for Obama and I’m glad I did,” she said. “I was hoping America could forget all that’s happened in the past.”

She doesn’t see a contradiction between supporting Proposition 8 and supporting Barack Obama. “I vote values,” Mayes said. “I have never voted straight ticket. I’m not gullible. I’m very value-based.”

In both Florida and Arizona, gay marriage was already against the law, but proponents of “traditional” marriage sought to amend their state constitutions to prevent the courts from declaring the laws unconstitutional.

Florida’s Proposition 2 was unexpected to succeed because it required 60 percent of the vote to pass—and it received 62 percent. Polls leading up to the election had the highest level of support at 55 percent, though some voters were still undecided.

In Arizona, even opponents of the measure weren’t too upset that it passed after Barack Obama was elected president. “I think the country was like, ‘Look, you get Obama, call it a day and go home,’ ” Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic state representative who led opponents against Proposition 102, told the New York Times.

Before the election, we highlighted some key propositions in swing states to get a better idea of what might draw voters to the polls. The results of those elections are below.

Colorado
Ballot measure name: Amendment 48
It would: change the definition of “person” in the Colorado constitution to include any fertilized egg, embryo or fetus.
Pass or fail? Amendment 48 failed with 73 percent of voters rejecting it.
Key quote: “We knew when Coloradans understood the far-reaching consequences of the amendment, they’d vote no,” Fofi Mendez, the No on 48 campaign manager, told the Rocky Mountain News. The amendment fractured Colorado’s pro-life community, with some prominent groups supporting the measure and others opposing it.

Missouri
Ballot measure name: Constitutional Amendment 1
It would: amend the state constitution to make English the official language at all governmental meetings where policy is discussed or decided.
Pass or fail? Constitutional Amendment 1 passed with 86.3 percent of voters supporting it.

Montana
Ballot measure name: Initiative 155
It would: extend state-funded health insurance to uninsured children.
Pass or fail? Initiative 155 passed with 70 percent of voters supporting it.
Key quote: “Here is an opportunity for Montanans to rally for the expansion of health care coverage for our state’s children. Montana has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the nation, and we know that kids without insurance are less likely to get care for common conditions, and especially dental work.” Mike Downing of RiverStone Health told the Billings Gazette. Supporters of the measure were concerned new voters would ignore down-ticket items, but I-155 passed easily.

Nevada
Ballot measure name: Question 2—People’s Initiative to Stop the Taking of our Land (or PISTOL)
It would: require land taken by the government under eminent domain laws be valued at its “highest and best use.”
Pass or fail? Question 2 passed with 61 percent of voters supporting it.

North Dakota
Ballot measure name: Measure 2—the Income Tax Cut Initiative
It would: lower taxes for corporations by 15 percent and taxes for individuals by 50 percent.
Pass or Fail? Measure 2 failed with only 30.2 percent of voters supporting it.
Key quote: “If they don’t understand the implications of the language, more often than not they’ll err on the side of caution and vote no,” University of North Dakota political science professor Dana Harsell told the Bismark Tribune. According to Harsell, many voters were undecided going into the voting booth.

Ohio
Ballot measure name: Issue 5
It would: cap the interest rate of payday loans at 28 percent. The current cap is 391 percent.
Pass or fail? Issue 5 passed with 63 percent of voters supporting it.
Key quote: “Ohio voters stripped payday lenders of their permit to fleece working people,” Yes on 5 treasurer Bill Faith told the Ohio State Lantern.

Pennsylvania
The only ballot measure is a bond measure to raise $400 million to make water and sewer improvements.
Pass or fail? The sewer bond question passed with 62 percent of voters supporting it.

It looks like my print subscriptions to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times might have actually earned me some money. That’s because, in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic election, the Wednesday edition of major newspapers are selling on eBay and Craigslist for upwards of $200.

Newspapers are printing hundreds of thousands of extra copies and still selling out. USA Today increased its print run by 380,000 copies and sold them all. The Washington Post tripled its newsstand rate to $1.50 and still sold out. In fact, it sold so many copies the paper ran off another 250,000 copies of Wednesday’s paper on Thursday. People lined up in front of the Chicago Sun-Times’ printing plant to buy copies practically straight from the baler. The examples go on and on.

This seems to indicate a couple of things about the state of print journalism. First, it puts into stark relief just how many people have dropped their subscriptions over the years. Of course, not every person of the millions who bought extra copies used to be a newspaper subscriber. But some certainly were, and it took a presidential election to get them to go out and buy a copy of the magazine.

More important is the concept of commemoration. The Sun-Times is selling framed copies of its cover for $99. The Times will send you a copy of Wednesday’s paper for $14.95, which includes a protective plastic sleeve. Newspaper companies that put their emphasis on their print product used to say newspapers were still valuable journalism because they provided context and analysis, something that couldn’t be delivered immediately. The millions of people buying these extra copies aren’t buying them for the news analysis, they’re buying them because it’s tangible proof of what happened on Tuesday night.

In some ways it’s gratifying that people still turn to papers in momentous times like these. But the newspaper is acting as little more than a photo to frame.

This election was something more than the beginning of the end for print papers—that happened long ago. This election was a true changing of the guard. Political sites like the Huffington Post and Politico saw huge increases in page views—HuffPo was up 472 percent compared to a year ago, and Politico was up 344 percent. Even traditional newspapers’ Web sites saw large increases in traffic. Want to see more polling data? Go to Pollster, FiveThirtyEight or 270toWin, don’t wait for the newspapers to summarize their own polls for you later.

Granted, I said I subscribe to both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which is unusual for someone my age. It’s mostly because I want something to read while eating breakfast, and the L.A. Times was practically giving the paper away. I certainly wasn’t waiting until Wednesday morning for my election analysis.

Newspapers love to write about themselves (see all that self-congratulatory Pulitzer coverage), so of course there were plenty of stories (previously linked to throughout this column) about the millions of extra newspapers printed to document Obama’s victory. And most of them had a slight air of gloating. “See, we aren’t dead yet!” the stories seemed to say.

Fair enough, but isn’t it a little sad for your goal to be stuffed in a protective sleeve, then stuffed in a closet and then likely never read again?

Related: Urb magazine founder Raymond Roker compiled a cool slideshow of covers celebrating Obama’s win. Here’s a taste.

Interview, Multimedia Production, Video Editing: Brooke-Sidney Gavins

Last night there was a protest in Los Angeles on Sunset Boulevard in response to the passage of Yes on 8, the anti-gay marriage bill. The proposition squeaked by with a separation of a few hundred thousand votes, and today, the No On 8 leadership conceded defeat.

But last night in Hollywood,  literally thousands of people marched along Sunset Boulevard for hours. There were arrests, helicopters swirled overhead for hours, but the protesters we saw were spirited, friendly, and fierce.

Vlad left Kiev in 1989 (the Wall fell and he was out) and became a citizen in the ’90s. He’s enjoyed the enfranchising privilege every year since then. Remembering that voter participation was “encouraged” (i.e. required) in the USSR, he never questioned his decision to take part in each election, but he also used that memory to guide his candidate choice.

“I voted absentee. It’s hard doing anything during the day because cab drivers have long hours.”

“I saw Communism and the soldiers’ badges, and I felt their hands on my shoulders. So i would never want to see anything close to that here.”

Here’s the brief vid Gaille Chua shot of my conversation with him:

Vlad the Cab Driver Speaks Voting from Gaille Chua on Vimeo.