I remember finishing off the 20th century watching G.W. Bush advancing toward the White House, and telling my parents that if that man ever became President of the USA, there would be nothing but trouble. They didn't believe me at the time.

I'm going to be 30 years old in the spring. All I've ever known of America is the Reagan America. I've grown up looking south and being saddened by the seething fury that somehow took root in it: despite Martin Luther King; despite Mark Twain; despite what Barack Obama has called your better history. I discovered Walt Whitman and learned about the possible universality of the American thought, what an American Dream worthy of the name might look like. I watched this election and thought of Whitman, but not so much when I watched Barack Obama as when I watched all of you who supported him.

Ultimately, what's important isn't that you elected a leader who's going to take you to the tomorrow you've promised yourselves. No leader can do that on his or her own; that tomorrow may, in fact, never come. That very risk is precisely why people hope, and why they struggle. But what is important is that a great leader is the focal point for an energy, a mood, a power, to form. Barack Obama served as the focal point for your energy: against cynicism, fatalism, paranoia, hatred and greed.

President Obama may, and probably will, make mistakes. He will be criticized, and often rightly so. That's relatively unimportant. This has been about you. You showed yourselves and people beyond your borders, whose lives (like mine) are nonetheless affected by how the USA conducts itself as a member of the world. Barack Obama is a disarming, powerful rhetorician, but all of you disarmed me. For at least one day I feel I can stop being skeptical. For the first time in my life I watched America and felt that kindness, generosity, and graciousness might win. I felt like I was reading Whitman's poetry.

But, as your president-elect has pointed out, don't see this victory as the change you want. This is just a turning point and the fight will pass to generations that follow ours. Proposition 8 in California is just one example among many of things that cannot be accepted. You've dropped a pebble into the ocean, and it needs to become a great wave. This election has been important to me, because had there been no Bush administration, the religious right in my country would never have accrued the political power that it has. This sea change in America is good for you; it's good for us; it's good for many other people. Nobody knows how far it could go; but that's why "perhaps" and "maybe" can be just as beautiful as "yes."

Congratulations, not primarily on your new President, but on your new resolve, and your new hearts. Don't be sad anymore! Fight joyfully! Thank each and every one of you for doing this.

I would make the argument that this process is what voting is designed to acomplish. Put someone in office, and if they fail to live up to the rationale that resulted in your vote, vote for someone else.

This is pretty much the worst concept of democracy ever developed: democracy with the least amount of demos possible.