You know, it didn't really hit me until just now. I mean, I knew what had happened. I was there. Campus exploded. I watched the returns all night, I celebrated by not doing my homework, I've been following the nomination process and the last breaths of a lame duck presidency which effectively ended at 5 p.m. on Friday. It wasn't until just now, when I was watching the Boss perform "The Rising" on the national mall with a full choir behind him (interestingly, dressed all in red) and the camera took an angle with Bruce in the foreground on the left and Obama in the background, that I realized that least popular (and maybe the worst) administration in America's history is out. That we can begin to recover our standing in the world, our civil liberties, our economy, and our Constitution. That we can tell the generations after us that we were there when America installed its first minority president. All of it hit me, and I was watching Bruce.
That's significant, that it was Bruce, who is, perhaps, the most American of any recent recording artist. Bruce, who has managed to alienate a significant portion of his fan base by campaigning for Kerry and than for Obama, whose most famous song (a song about the plight of veterans returned from Vietnam) was co-opted by the Reaganites, who has been writing songs about what it's like to live, work and love in America, who made my realise all of this. There's an idea I've been kicking around for a paper that would trace the history of liberalism in this country through the lens of Springsteen's albums, and that image, of The Boss singing a song of healing to a nation that needs healing, has cemented the idea inside my head.

I've always thought that this was our country and the we were going to take it back. I think we've done it. That's the beauty of the Obama campaign. The populist spirit of the Obama campaign fits perfectly with the populist bent of the the Boss's music. We did this together. And that's something for us to be proud of.