The XX Factor: What women really think.

Counting the Change

Some small observations in the spirit of Melinda’s post on Elizabeth Dole: Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., is out. Virgil Goode, R-Va., looks to have lost in a squeaker. That last-ditch attack ad flopped. South Dakotans defeated Measure 11, which would have prohibited abortions except in absurdly limited cases and was meant as a test rocket to take down Roe v Wade.

Maybe we really can bend the arc of history.

My favorite part of Obama’s speech tonight was the guided tour through the amazing 106-year lifetime of Ann Nixon Cooper. It forced me to catch up with so many of you who were already seeing this election through the eyes of your children. It made me see that the world in which my sons will grow to adulthood will be unrecognizable to me. Just as Ann Nixon Cooper moved from a time before cars to voting on a touch screen, my kids are going to look back at the ways we have talked about race and gender and class and geography this year and laugh. Probably as they speed off on their X-wing starfighters. And the part I have yet to fully absorb? It's not just that, as Obama said tonight, “America can change.” It’s that my kids will wake up tomorrow morning in a fundamentally different world than the one they went to sleep in.