NYC's 'Elite' Happy for Reinforcements: McInerney

New York celebrated Tuesday night, cheers ringing through Manhattan. “The last time a stranger hugged me on the street was September 11, 2001,” author Jay McInerney writes in the Independent, hailing the broadened coalition that made Barack Obama’s victory possible. “This moment feels like the obverse of that. … After 8 long, dark years, we feel that history is with us again.”

John McCain called New York and Washington the headquarters of the liberal elite, and “imagined the rest of the country would nod their heads and sneer.” Instead, middle-class, white voters in Florida, Ohio and Virginia decided to change course. “We should feel glad to have them back,” McInerney writes. “After all, a liberal elite can’t run a democracy by itself.” (More Election 2008 stories.)