Will plumbers riot in the streets?

To get a qualified black man into the right place at the right time. Without the disastrous reign of Bush and the terrible campaign of McCain, we would not have seen the first African American president. The deaths around the world and the economic destruction of America for the past eight years has yielded a silver lining, and I am glad to see this moment.

Though McCain is touted as a "maverick" who knows how to reach across party lines and evince a degree of clarity and sane non-partisanship in American politics, there was little evidence of that during his campaign, including his concession speech where loud "boos" and nasty comments came out of the crowd. In contrast, members of the Obama rally kindly applauded McCain and his campaign efforts. The difference in each crowd's reaction made it clear to me what kind of campaign each candidate has run and how vastly different the country would be under each administration.

Obama has proven that he is the better man to help end the nation's divisive and petty habits, a potential he's shown by pulling more young people to the polls than ever; a great number of middle-aged voters who never thought they would go for this untried and unestablished candidate; and even the most small-minded among us who saw some potential in his cool, intelligent approach to the nation's troubles.

The Republican party suffered greatly tonight and will likely not win another election until it undergoes a vast transformation. The era of the culture war must come to an end: it must win back its intellectual establishment -- the articulate urban "elites" who helped to build the party's ideology, like William F. Buckely -- and show itself as a party with strong socially conservative values while remaining articulate and sympathetic to every citizen's ills, as was the case during the Eisenhower administration half a century ago. It must also distance itself from self-aggrandizing zealots who espouse racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and sexist propaganda that do nothing but alienate more potential supporters. Only then will their journey continue.

and don't let the door hit you on the way out. BTW, take Bible Spice and her secessionist hubbie with you.

A child of privilege and no exceptional talent who just might do the right thing and get out of the way.

Kudos to djr41den for the coinage "Bible Spice". The hits just keep on coming!

Today Americans can rejoice at electing a President that we can be proud of. If you didn't hear Obama's acceptance speech, listen to it. If you did, listen to it again. His words are made of gold, y'all.

McCain, Palin, Lieberman, Graham, Giuliani, Thompson, Romney, Bush, Cheney, Barnes, Kristol, Gramm, Rove, and Joe the Plumber.

America rejected their garbage. And I for one will not simply forget how McCain and his crew so quickly went to calling areas of the country un-American, hinted the PRESIDENT ELECT was friends with terrorists, and sought to label different views on tax policy as unacceptable, terrifying socialism.

McCain either embraced a disgusting, pathetic road to victory or was too weak to stand up to the currents in his own party. Either way doesn't speak well for him. And Palin will be a joke in a few weeks. Or an easy Trivial Pursuit answer.

If the Republican party doesn't want to spend the next few election cycles in the wilderness, they need to understand what POLICIES positions have lead them there. This isn't just an issue of selling a new brand or thinking of a clever new slogan.

Just about every candidate this hateful creep has endorsed, including during his time as mayor, has lost! Thank you creep!

Ding dong, the Wicked Witch of Wassila can now fly back to Alaska and take her hate with her. Nobody bought her "he's not like us" crap. If McCain hadn't chosen her, he would have lost but it wouldn't be such a humiliating blowout.

that John McCain was a better man then his campaign presented him as. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't matter now. I don't feel like gloating - Obama's speech reminded me that we have to go in a different direction from all that now, the sooner the better.

Good.

What a profound difference between the mammoth crowd for Barack Obama and the small gathering for John McCain...and not just in size. Bitter, rancorous and resentful they are the dying stump of a by gone time. Palin looked like she could barely contain her anger. The Obama crowd was diverse in everyway imaginable, enthusiastic, optimistic, engaged and well behaved.

I really do think a page has been turned in this country. Seeing Obama and biden (and their families) was like a breath of fresh air.

...opting for money over love; lies over truth; status over service; and power over wisdom. He wanted everything he felt his name and status was about, but he overlooked the honor and service they were really about in favor of superficialities. There comes a point where all that catches up with you, where there is no going back, and no salvaging what you've done. The ancient Greeks would say McCain made the kind of mistake the Fates don't forgive. But his real tragedy is that he will never realize that until way too late.

To be sure McCain had a tough assignment. Win with the most unpopular president ever on your shoulders. I still thought he could win. But McCain kept making mistakes that made his task even harder. He wanted to be known as a maverick, which he was, sort of, but starting in 2006, he kissed the right wing's ass and took a long drink from the GOP Kool-Aid.

When he had the nomination wrapped up, he fixated on Lieberman whom either he should have known would never be acceptable to the GOP right wing, or he should have bit the bullet and risked a convention fight. John the Maverick takes on his own party in prime time. That's just good TV. Instead he chose Caribou Barbie with her entourage of stupid trailer trash. Palin sent shudders down the spines of many Americans. She is an empty vessel with no intellectual underpinnings. We've had one of those as president for 8 years.

BTW, I bet the pregnant daughter and her reluctant beau don't get married now.

Then he suspended his campaign to fix the economy. He added nothing to the bailout proceedings and looked desperate doing it. The economy is not his strong suit and it showed. In the process he pissed off David Letterman who had three weeks of fun at McCain's expense. Tina Fey took care of Palin.

His performances in the debates were awful. Obama's cool got to him, making him look like the angry old man. "Get off my lawn!"

Instead of running a positive campaign about issues he allowed his supporters to throw every imaginable lie at Obama. I especially liked the challenges to Obama's birth certificate brought in 7 courts.

McCain had a tough task. A hated president, a party out of ideas, two wars and an economy in the toilet. But his mistakes made it much worse. If he had run a smarter campaign and turned a couple of states who knows?