The McCain campaign and the right-wing media, like Rush and Hannity, made a lot of the idea that Obama is a radical leftist. I never got that from him myself, and it will be interesting to see how he governs. Will he go to the left or be more of a centrist? Will he claim a leftist mandate?

Bush made a lot of his imaginary "mandate," and it turned out he was not a "uniter, not a divider," like he said he was. He had power, but not a real mandate. His idea of bipartisanship was to invite the other side to vote for his bills exactly the way he wanted them, not to compromise, and if they didn't like it, he shoved them down their throats with his majorities in Congress. I think that attitude is partly how Bush destroyed the Republican party.

I have a feeling Obama will be a lot more of a centrist than people think, certainly a lot more centrist than Bush was. This was a pretty decisive Democratic victory, but a lot of the Democratic gains in the House and Senate came from conservative areas of the country, and unless the Democrats want to experience the same backlash the Republicans just experienced, they are going to have to have some discipline and govern as centrists.

Most of the people of this country are centrists. The Republicans lost sight of what the people want, and they used their power to govern too far to the right on many issues, despite having no mandate to do so. I think Obama is smart enough and also charismatic enough to keep the Democrats from abusing their power the way the Republicans did.

The other thing for Democrats is that they are now going to have to put up or shut up with solutions that really do work, or they will get tossed out next round. Ideology is one thing, but it doesn't always really WORK in the real world. With the kinds of problems we have right now, if you don't offer real solutions that work, people are not going to take it, no matter how ideologically "pure" your programs are.

One thing I expect to happen, and it's something I really look forward to, is that I think Obama is really going to call on people to SERVE in the national interest. I think people are ready for that. I think people want to be called to do more than just shop and spend and keep the economy moving. Obama's opponents made a lot of fun of his record as a community organizer, but I really think that his community organizing experience is what won him the election. I had registerd at his website and made a donation, and you would not imagine the opportunities offered to be involved. It is a very sophistcated organization and network that communicates and organizes through a lot of different channels, and that is not going away just becasue the election is over. Reagan had similar networks of motivated supporters in the days of snail mail and landline telephones. Imagine that same network in this era of email, cell phones, and text messages. This is going to be very interesting. I think he will be able to get popular support behind any agenda he wants to push, and I also expect he will call people to serve outside of that kind of role as well --- direct service to communities and to the nation to get things done.