I feel like I can breathe again. My life seems richer with meaning and purpose. I no longer feel like an alien or wonder if there’s somewhere to escape from an insane regime. I sense opportunities for our generation — to be root children for the current crop of flower children. We looked at all these things 40 years ago: energy, food, war, peace, environment, fairness, justice, equality, gender, etc., etc.; but we were naive and had no mentors aside from ideological stuff of the Old left. We are now Old left, but no longer left over. I like it. We are experiencing a rush of generalized euphoria, in cafes, on the street, everywhere. And we hear ourselves in conversations about how much there is to fix and how it will take lots of work and time. I am happy to see positive responses from around the world: a much speedier rehabilitation of America’s image than I anticipated. We have done something great. Now we have to leap into the breach and keep O’s team’s feet to the fire of progressive change. The right will do all it can to dampen and extinguish this, to arouse a sense of impossibility and unadvisability, to assert and sustain a concept of America as a center-right country. Our every conversation counts.

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A note from a colleague at Columbia University:

over our heads here in work but obsessing wildly on the news. waited 45 years for this. obama already looking centrist, but hell so was jfk. my friends in indonesia and france and japan and holland and elsewhere are elated. so am i. the kids are completely invested in this. my students can’t remember anything other than bush. like waking up from a nightmare for them only that now they see that they were in deep denial like just about everybody else. i’m glad jewish americans went for obama by 77%. that’s healing, still, more whites voted for mcpain than o. manhattan was 85% o. everyone is smiling at everyone, a sensation of connection, like after 9/11 but without the sadness. on the subway platform last night alice and i waited for a train and a young woman leans over to see if there’s a train coming and turns to us smiling and alice asks “Is there a train coming?” and the girl says “no, i’m just smiling because obama won!” she was white. and earlier yesterday morning, there was a plumber working in the hallway of our building and when i entered he smiled and said “great election!” and i said “yeah, the best in my lifetime since jfk, actually even better than that.” and we spontaneously shook hands. he was black. so there’s a hypersensitivity now to class positions and interconnectedness all of a sudden, just as fast as “world opinion” has changed. like my friend in paris said, 97% french wanted obama for president (pause, then, “in the u.s., not in france…”) so now we see prospects of lawrence summers. please spare me for the time being. at least everyone is talking about politics now. overheard by a cellphoner on broadway yesterday, “hey, he’s not gonna take care of the world’s problems in 13 hours” and “i told my mamma, just because he’s black doesn’t mean i’m gonna make more” and on and on. people are talking. like the old greek waitresses in tom’s diner where alice and i’ve eaten for the last 8 years, like suddenly they’re quoting headlines in greece (and greek) saying obama’s the “president of the planet” and looking at me and saying do you think he’s gonna be able to do anything. and that’s a good question. at least now there are questions.