The Fat Lady Finally Sang

I finally gave up and went to bed last night at 3:30 am, having followed election night as far as my weariness (and wariness) would take me. Here in Prague we are six hours ahead of New York and nine ahead of the West Coast, so the outcome was unclear election-wise at that hour. As I closed down my computer, the map of America was awash in blood-red states falling to Mr. Romney. I awakened this morning to much the same surprise Harry Truman must have felt, beating Thomas Dewey in the ’48 election. Pundits are not reliable. The Chicago Tribune misspoke Truman’s demise with a famous wrong headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” 64 years ago and the bleeding stopped across America while I slept.

I view this as a watershed victory, without ironic reference in to Hurricane Sandra. Old white America has finally lost its 236 year grip on the nation and its politics. It’s a well-earned loss, the nation recently becoming more ethnically mixed before the very eyes of a heedless old white power struc…