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.

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.

Mr President-Elect, there is a pile of ticking time-bombs waiting in your in-tray and you have to defuse each one of them, fast. Welcome to the next four years of your life.

"Americans Chose Change" was the striking blue headline in Wednesday's An-Nahar daily of Lebanon.

President Obama will combine elements of FDR's and JFK's presidencies: charismatic leadership, ideological flexibility, and responsiveness to pressure from the left.

We fought. We hoped. We worked. We cried. We panicked. We debated. We held our breath. It's not hyperbolic to say that we helped shift the course of the world.

I thought, maybe finally the last barriers separating blacks from believing they can get, and will get, what they strive for, can begin to be crossed.

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.

A man plastered in Cynthia McKinney stickers poked me right on the Obama button fixed to my coat. "Hold him accountable. Stop the war," he said and dashed out of the car and up the stairs.

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.

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.

No matter what your name or race is you can make it here. America is for real. The hope is real.

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?

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.

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

Last night, while standing just a few feet from the podium from which our next pro-choice president spoke, I was overcome with pride and emotion.

The tears running down my face last night and this morning were of something so much more than happiness, so much more than simple relief. They were an exhalation.

In dealing with the mortgage crisis it is critical to keep people in their houses. To do that we have to have ways to renegotiate their mortgages.

Elections aren't about intellect. They're about emotion. That's why people so often vote against their own interests.