The American Transformation

Rebecca Traister writes at Spiegel

How could Jesse Jackson not cry, standing in that crowd, realizing that whatever hurt time and generational difference might have inflicted on his project and his legacy, he was witnessing the dawn of a world that his work made possible, but which he had not been able to make possible himself.

And then he began to wave a small American flag on a wooden stick, like a kid at a Fourth of July parade. Elsewhere in the crowd, Oprah Winfrey, that most almighty American who, like Jackson, helped launch Obama's dream, but who on the night it was made manifest was simply a member of a throng that could only look on and weep, watched as the uneven ground on which America was built became slightly more level beneath their feet.

The president elect in his speech said, the genius of America is that it can change. It can and it did. Rev. Jesse Jackson waving the flag for Obama captures it perfectly. What an extraordinary day.