What do we do when we win? Reflections on the election victory.(TO THE POINT)

There's freedom for all, you've heard the call ...

--Skull Snaps

AND THE CELEBRATIONS BEGAN. From the streets of downtown Oakland to Harlem's 1-2-5, from the million gathered in Grant Park to the flash march down to the White House, the music played and the people danced. Somewhere, the members of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team--troops brought home from Iraq only to be mobilized in case of an election-day national emergency--eased back in their boots and relaxed.

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In Accra, Ghana, my cousin--a recent graduate of Punahou School, Barack Obama's high school in Hawai'i, where his personal racial dramas began to play out--watched as American expatriates screamed and sobbed and hugged, Ghanaian boys waved an American flag, and women fell to the ground to pray. As Obama stepped to the podium in Chicago, the sun rose in the African sky. It was a new day.

Four decades ago, Richard Nixon and George C. Wallace won 57 percent of the popular vote around politics rooted in a racist backlash against civil rights and an abiding disgust for youth. The shape of that election and the crushed hope of that tumultuous year have dominated American politics ever since. Even Democratic president Bill Clinton largely governed in concession to white backlash during his two terms. He established a commission to discuss race issues (while he eviscerated welfare using tired but apparently timeless stereotypes of "irresponsible" women of color to garner broad support), unleashed corporate deregulation and allowed the unchecked expansion of the prison-industrial complex. Schisms over race and generation have defined 40 years of politics in this country.

So when Senator Barack Obama began his campaign in Springfield, Illinois, in the icy chill of February 2007 at the location where Abraham Lincoln had given his "A House Divided" speech, it was hard to imagine this biracial late-Boomer from Hawai'i could mount anything more than an insurgent campaign. But after 18- to 24-year-olds handed Obama the first Democratic primary victory in Iowa and Blacks united behind his candidacy, most longtime political insiders could only gasp at what came next. The old ocean suddenly produced a roaring swell. Obama got on his board.