For the first time in my life I got a glimpse into what it must have felt like for my grandparents in 1948: to witness with their own eyes the realization of an impossible dream.

I love history and had often whined that I wasn't lucky enough to have lived during a more exciting age: I could have been a Tuskegee Airman, Buffalo Soldier, or beatnik. But last night history came to me.

With a black man pulling off the astonishing feat of rising to the presidency in a land riven by racism for more than two centuries, there was a sense of extraordinary release, and even more extraordinary empowerment.

President-Elect Obama is clearly a very smart guy and a very good politician. Unlike the last Dem with those credentials, he's also exceedingly disciplined. Those qualities will come up against a couple of very major problems.

Obama has not hit a home run; he has merely earned the right to step into the batter's box.

The "everything is possible" mantra is no longer viewable as just a naïve belief, open to scoffing by cynics and pessimists. It's no longer just an idea, a possibility. It happened.

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation President David Krieger is drafting a special First 100 Days program. Dr. Krieger has already completed a briefing for the new president.

The truth is -- and some Americans don't understand this -- the French also wanted the best for us.

John McCain had just given his concession speech and everyone from the anchors to the pundits agreed there was only one word for what the man showed: grace.

It is hard to overstate the landslide victory for women last night. For too long, our health and rights have been used as a political battering ram.

The reality of politics and race are such that having a black president will mean little if there are no changes in the material conditions of Black America.

With the country at an ideological watershed, Obama has a historic opportunity to reshape the ruling paradigm of American politics.

Here are some comments I gathered on what Obama's victory means for America's image in the world, from thinkers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tariq Ramadan, and Garry Kasparov.

I look forward to working with the entire progressive community in the months to come as we turn our focus away from elections and toward governing so we can quickly get our nation back on track.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the social progress of this country is to blind oneself to how much further we have to go before racism as a barrier to achievement is a thing of the past.

If the only time you can actually speak from your heart is when you have lost, then why are you running? What good are you doing anyone, including yourself?

The table is set to wipe away the legacy of decades of failed conservative ideology, but what becomes of that opportunity is up to us.

Forty years after his assassination shattered dreams and brought his quest to change America to a sudden, brutal halt, Robert Kennedy reached the goal that had been denied him in life.

My son will be growing up in a world my father didn't, a world with more possibilities open to him than existed before; closer, at least, to the world as it should be than the world as it was. Or is.