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I like how Frank Rich describes the mood that followed the election:
Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders.[...]For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.Interestingly, in the days following the election, what felt weird was not that the country could have elected Barack Obama, but that it could've elected George W. Bush. How could the same people who did this also do that? Of course, it's easy to overstate what "America" is doing at any given time. Bush won by -0.5 percent and three percent, respectively. Obama won by six percent. This remains a closely divided country. Liberals had a tendency to forget that in the Bush years, and allow folks to overstate the degree to which a fearful and mean conservatism represented the authentic American center. Today, the country feels rather different. It does not feel so easily divided or easily frightened. But the election was a six point difference, not a 16-point route, and a fair slice of our countrymen still believe Obama a Muslim*. We may not be so easily divided or frightened, but we are still divided, and some of us remain quite frightened. Just not most of us.*I'd really like to see some polling breaking down how many people a) though Obama a Muslim and b) voted for him anyway.
