Turning Away From The Abyss

That is the first meaning of this election for me. I'm overjoyed by having an African-American president for this country, but I'm even more overjoyed (should such a thing be possible) about the way we have managed, at the very last minute, to grab the steering wheel of this bus we call the United States and to stop it from its imminent careen into an abyss. Now we can wipe our foreheads, take a couple of deep breaths and then start working on all that damage the bus has. There's a lot of work ahead (those wheels must go back on, for example) and progress will initially consist of just all that delayed maintenance. But don't forget that it really is progress.

Glenn Greenwald points out an important aspect of that maintenance: Two or three Supreme Court Justices are likely to retire in the next four years. Had McCain been elected, the court would have become a rubber stamp for the Republican Party.