Congratulations, President Elect Obama

Allahpundit–with an assist from the late great SoxBlogger himself sums it up:

One of the last things Dean Barnett said to me was that, as best he could tell, Barack Obama is “a good guy and a decent man.” I don’t think he’d mind me telling you that, especially under the circumstances. It’s a testament to his generosity of spirit that even in the heat of a campaign, with every reason to think the worst of his opponent, Dean couldn’t help but give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s Barnett all over, and that’s what made him an indispensable man whom we’ve been forced, horrendously, to dispense with.

I offer that as comfort to those of you who have no faith in The One but who do have faith in, and abiding affection for, DB. My guess is he’d have handled the news tonight with the same magnanimity that distinguished all of his writing. So in that spirit, congratulations to Barry O on a race superbly run and to our country for not having let the wrong reasons deter it from making the wrong choice. I’ll never be a fan, but I swear I’ll never take a nutroots posture either in relishing his failures because it helps my party. Like it or not, he’s my president. As a great man once said, country first.

Indeed. An interview today with Bill Ayers provides a hidden ray of sunshine and some hope for the future:

In his first interview since he became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, said today that he had a distant relationship with Barack Obama and that Obama’s opponents had turned him into “a cartoon character.”

The Black Panthers seen in Philadelphia today also looked like cartoon characters, which is how those who practice the now forty year old sturm und drang of radical chic should look in the 21st century.

Megan McArdle wrote today that:

Whether or not you are for Obama, the candidate, I think you have to admit that there is one pretty exciting thing happening today: we will never again live in an America where a black man can’t be elected president.

Spot-on. Barack Obama’s victory should once and for all finally break the notion that race is a barrier to any goal in the United States. And those who’ve built their power from anger and racial divisiveness, like Ayers, the Panthers, and Reverend Wright should now be mocked like the small men they are. It will be up to Obama as president to transcend the figures of his past–and it’s up to the rest of us as a nation to finally put them into the rearview mirror.

Good luck over the next four years President Elect Obama–and as this Onion satire suggests (as does your own vice presidential nominee), you’re going to need it.