For the pros

The progressives that is...yes, yes, a little more than a week removed from Obama and the Democratic (not the Democrat, you idiot conservatives) party's dramatic, sweeping victory, we get to pat ourselves on the collective back and allow ourselves to feel pretty damn good going into the holiday season. Here's a little more on why/how we won, what remains to be done in the present, and what goals I believe we should have for the future:
1. Why/how we won: Lets begin with the how. Obama's fifty state strategy paid huge dividends and may well have permanently reshaped the electoral map. He also brought a huge number of new voters, especially young voters, to the polls. According to exit polls, Obama won virtually every demographic, except among whites in general, though he did win among younger whites (18-29; the full results are at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1).
However, why he won may have less to do with campaign strategy and more to do with state of the economy. Recall that before the market essentially went on its journey through the center of the earth, McCain was ahead in national polls. His campaign seemed to follow the markets as well, going to more and more obscure negative attacks, and of course, there was and still is "aahlsoo" the Palin factor...as it turned out the nastiness the barracuda had in spades, she lacked in tact, poise, and intelligence--only the GOP would glorify such a substanceless trainwreck of a human being.
In other words, Obama may have won as much because of the self destruction of McCain's candidacy and the economic results of 8 years of the Bush administration as anything.
Still, the results are staggering. Obama won 364 electoral votes, turning Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and possibly Missouri blue, all of which were won by Bush in '04. He also won the popular vote 66,361,433 (53%) to McCain's 58,024,608 (46%). In the end, we crushed them, and that feels really, really good. Suck it cons!
2. In the present: sit back and watch the destruction. The day after the election, Fox News was discussing whether the voting age should be moved to 35, and you'll still hear a lot of dumb comments about socialism and terrorism from the dumber cons--wait, is that an oxymoron? My favorite are the snide little comments about how people voted for Obama but they don't know why--that we are sheep for change. In rebuttal, I'd like to point out that conservatives knew more about why they weren't voting for Obama than why they were voting for McCain, and moreover, for the right wing to say that Obama's voters were, or are not, critical thinkers is the single most absurdly self-unaware things I have ever heard--even if I count the ramblings of Rush and O'Reilly. Yes, because somehow electing Bush president twice was at the apex of critical thinking...what a bunch of fucking bullshit.
But to be a bit more positive, we as progressives need to: a) encourage those fiscal, states-rights conservatives to retake their party, and b) alienate and belittle the religious and philosophical zealotry that took over the Republican party starting with Reagan. Unfortunately, conservative talk show hosts are too rabid and crazed a group to tell their base the truth, which is that they lost because they didn't have a real platform and their economic philosophy simply doesn't work, so it is up to us to say exactly that, and encourage the reasonable Republicans to either join and influence our party, or to take back their own.
With the crazed and rabid religious nutjobs that make up the base of the party, we need to do what a good football team does when its up by 10 points in the middle of the third quarter: go on a long, clock draining, touchdown scoring drive in which you just physically dominate the other team and totally demoralize them. We need to have that killer instinct, step on their throats, and show absolutely zero tolerance or forgiveness for their insertion of hate and immaturity into the political landscape. STAMP THEM OUT!
I really hope that our Democratic leaders understand this as well. We still need to have hearings on torture, the manipulation of intelligence in the leadup to war in Iraq, spying on American citizens without warrants, and the politicization of our Justice Department. These issues lie at the core of our constitution, and if this is to be a country of laws and not men, we simply cannot allow lawlessness and despotism to go unpunished. Those who are responsible should be made an example of by being forced to undergo significant jail time.
3. Goals for the future: Obviously, Obama and the Democratic party have their work cut out for them and I would expect that they will address the economy, the war in Iraq, and the energy crisis, first and formost. A few issues that still lie at the core of our domestic problems that we cannot forget about however, are: the healthcare crisis, improving public education, and the war on drugs/the prison industrial complex.
The healthcare crisis is going to kill our economy, if not many of our citizens, if it is not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Socialism is the way to go here--the military is socialized, as are our police and fire departments, and public education. While all have their problems, the fact is that there are certain segments of needs a society has that cannot be solved effectively by the free market. It is much more efficient to socialize these segments, and then to run them as cost effectively possible.
We also need to totally rethink our educational system. As a recent addition to public schools, there are a myriad of problems that need to be wholly overhauled. For my part, I will be writing a thesis position paper on what those problems and their causes are, and how we can solve them by redesigning everything from the structure to how we evaluate student performance to how we evaluate and pay teachers.
Last, but not least, is the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We currently imprison more people than any other country in the world per capita, and if the fact that we are doing an injustice to many imprisoned doesn't move you, perhaps the cost will. It costs about $32,000 a year for every prisoner in our system. We have over 2 million. That's a lot.
The cause of this is that: a) we continue to increase prison sentences in the hope of cutting the crime rate, and b) we still criminalize the use of most drugs. The result is a lot of people that were either trying to get high or trying to get rich (the American dream, right?), end up rotting in jail for much longer than is realistically necessary. To solve this problem we need to decriminalize most drugs and treat their users as addicts rather than criminals. This would eliminate the black market that breeds the vast sums of money that allow for the rise of organized crime and gangs.
Back to the present--celebrate pros--we are potent, but now that we are in power, it is time for the real work to begin.