We are living in historic times

I'm sitting here in my dining room in California, about an hour before midnight, thinking about something I never expected to see.

If the present numbers hold up, Barack Obama will not only have been elected president, he will have won by an electoral landslide. If Obama's leads hold up in Indiana and North Carolina, he will not only carry every state John Kerry won in 2004, he will have turned around nine different states that George W. Bush won.

Some of them, in fact, are states Democrats just don't win.

Indiana and Virginia, for example, were last won by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Jimmy Carter won North Carolina in 1976.

That's a lot of elections, a lot of times Republicans have been able to take their votes for granted.

Obama won two states that are critical to any GOP winning coalition -- Ohio and Florida -- and he won both by significant margins.

It looks like the final count will give him 364 electoral votes to John McCain's 174.

I'm sure the Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys of the world will discount this election by saying the collapse of the economy this fall doomed the Republicans to defeat. But I think there's more to it than that.

Millions of people who had never voted before came out for Obama this time, and I think it was because instead of trying to frighten people into voting for him, he tried to inspire them.

He ran a mostly positive campaign.

And in the end, there didn't even seem to be a Bradley Effect. Obama's race helped him as much as it hurt him, and I believe it will mean a great deal in the face America shows to the world.

We live in historic times, and I for one am glad I lived to see it.