Wrong Ideas, Over

An excerpt from The Rachel Maddow Show on November 5th:

The idea that America is too flawed, too scarred by racism to elect a black president? That idea is over. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said back in April that neither a woman nor black man could ever get elected in a country like this? How satisfying is it to prove that guy wrong? The idea the white voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana could be counted on to vote for a woman, but never a black man? That idea is over. The idea that the Democratic Party is a regional party, it only appeals in the northeast and on the west coast and part of the upper Midwest? That's over. The 50-state strategy with all its risks, signed, sealed, and delivered last night's blue map. The idea that the Republican Party has an indestructible, unbeatable get-out-to-vote efforts? That idea is over. The idea that 527 groups will dominate any election or any candidate they want to - that's over. The idea that liberals can't succeed on television - that's over. Yes, we can.

The idea, I confess, my idea that the parties were so unfairly branded on national security that we couldn't elect a Democrat in wartime anymore -that idea is over. The Bradley effect, over.

For all of those assumptions and theories, I welcome you to obsolescence. All of that is finished. That's all old world. Barack Obama, from who he is to how he ran, he extinguished the old world. If you hear someone suggest those old world assumptions about politics, race, and what the USA is or is not capable of, if you hear it at work, you hear it at party, or at a press conference, or at a United Nations speech or the Thanksgiving table-you are now licensed to laugh out loud at that person. Today is a new world and it is a new world about which we know very little.

The question tonight is not what just ended. We know what just ended. The question is: What happens now?

--Rachel Maddow