New 'Real' America Sheds Swagger for Idealism: Klein

Hey, John McCain—welcome to the new Real America. Joe Klein writes in Time that Barack Obama’s victory isn’t just a changing of the guard, but fundamentally redefines how we think of the country. We’ve been living in Ronald Reagan’s America for years, writes Klein, nostalgic for the “real America” that McCain talked about—“white, homogeneous, small-town.” But now “real America” is Obama’s, not Reagan’s.

“Unlike many elections I've covered where the stakes were small and the differences between the candidates were minor, this was a big election, with big differences between the candidates,” writes Klein. Obama won on issues, but he also won on more than issues. The vote was a ratification of a new American identity, “younger, more optimistic, less cynical.”
(More Barack Obama stories.)