Yes You Can

When you've worked hard to keep the candidate who won from getting there, it can be a very dark day, indeed.

However large the disappointment in the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election for McCain backers like myself, we must all embrace the symbolic achievement of the accession of a man of color to the Presidency of the United States.

Whether this is the right man (and he's not), or whether the campaign coverage was fair and balanced (and it wasn't) is all fodder for a different day. Today is the day to tell all Americans that there is nothing you cannot achieve in this country. (You don't even have to be honest.)

As I told my High School History classes yesterday, "No matter who you wanted to win, the fact remains that America elected a Black man to be President of the United States, and that fact is the most significant positive event in the political history of the United States of America. There cannot be a Black man or women, or of any ethnicity, for that matter, than can now have any doubts about what they can achieve in this country, if they work hard for it and plan carefully."

Americans, as Obama's victory speech proclaimed, "Yes we can." We can, here, accomplish almost anything we set out to do.

Congratulations, Barack Obama. You have broken through what may have seemed like a barrier of race to many people of color, whether it was real or imagined.