Now what?

My God, is it over yet? After countless months of campaign rhetoric, it all comes down to today: by the time you read this, chances are very good that Barack Obama will have been officially elected the 44th president of the United States. And it won't be just a narrow victory that the Republicans can steal (again) with their dirty tricks and armies of lawyers; I say it will be a freakin' landslide -- what Newsweek's Markos Moulitsas calls "the utter rejection of conservative ideology." After eight years of dwelling in darkness, folks like me can finally come out of the closet and once again breathe the sweet, fresh air in a nation where "liberal" is no longer a dirty word.

OK, so what happens next?

76 days from today when he is inaugurated, President Obama will assume the most challenging job that has probably faced any individual in modern times, and expectations for his performance are sky-high. Between the battered economy and a huge deficit at home, two wars that have stretched our armed forces perilously thin, the rise of terrorism and a decline in America's global image coupled with a changing power dynamic abroad, the man is going to have his work cut out for him. The pressures will be enormous and he could stumble, which would no doubt delight his naysayers. Thankfully, however, he will not have to deal with these issues in isolation; a crisis tends to mobilize people and bring them together, and he will have the best and brightest minds in the country available to help solve our many problems.

But for the first time in years, today I have optimism as I look forward from this historic moment. It's finally time for the change and reform we have hoped for, time to end the arrogance and deceit of the Bush administration. As diplomat Richard N. Haass puts it, "My reading of things is that the American people are ready to be leveled with."

Let the leveling begin.