Wherever I go these days (the State Capitol of Texas, a restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown, and many points in between), people are telling moving stories about the reaction to the election. For instance:

• Three hundred people were still lined up to vote at a precinct in Pittsburgh when time ran out. Very quickly the news came that Obama had won Pennsylvania. So there was no opportunity to vote, and voting didn’t matter because the state had been called. Everyone decided to stay in the parking lot and pray together for the outcome in the West.
• Much of the Tufts student body was gathered in the Student Center when news came of the Obama victory. They massed in the main quad and sang the National Anthem and other patriotic songs until 1 am, when they marched to Davis Square.

When both of these stories were told, there were Republicans in the room who listened with grace and even appreciation. I think the President Elect has broad good will, partly because he broke the race barrier, partly because he ran a dignified and positive campaign, and partly because we all need him to succeed in this time of crisis. But it’s important to remember that many people did not vote for him, and some certainly had principled reasons not to. We need a two-party system across the country, including here in New England where there are now zero Republican US Representatives. Nothing really valuable can happen unless people of good will on the Republican side voluntarily participate, both in Congress and in civil society. It’s asking a lot for them to keep clapping at stories of Democratic triumph. They can focus on the civil-rights breakthrough, as William Bennett did rather gracefully on Election Night. But there is much more to Obama than his African American heritage. Especially for those of us who enthusiastically supported him because of his agenda, an important challenge now is to make sure we respect differences and are ready to include other people without assuming that they buy the whole package.

(Austin, TX) Last night, in Worcester, Mass., I heard Michael Dukakis speak at Clark University. He was very funny and had a whole ordinary-old-guy-who-once-lost-a-presidential-election schtick going. “Folks, I owe you an apology. If I had beaten Old Man Bush, you’da never heard of the kid. … Folks, you can ask me any questions you want, but not about the campaign we just had. If I knew anything about presidential politics, I’d be standing here in a different capacity.” “Folks, next time I run for president, Jim and Bob here are going to be my national co-chairs.”

I happened to walk out with the Governor, Kitty Dukakis, and a family friend of theirs, although I didn’t bug them by saying anything. The former Democratic presidential nominee went off to find the family car and save his elderly companions from walking on the rain-slicked paths.

Meanwhile, we read that the Obamas’ ordinary lives are now over–no more dinners out for Barack and Michelle, unless they want to have 300 Secret Service agents along. No more hair cuts at barber shops. It makes me think of the fickleness of fame, that great wheel that lifts some up and lowers others. Although the Obama Campaign was far more impressive than the Dukakis Campaign of ’88, I’m convinced that Obama won and Dukakis lost because of timing and sync with the national Zeitgeist. In the affairs of individuals, chance is almost everything. “The wise man pays just enough attention to fame to avoid being despised”–Epicurus.

I loved Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union and took it as an exploration of rosy nostalgia and distopian fantasy as two poles of modern Jewish thought. Then into my mailbox comes a letter from Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon himself, on behalf of Peace Now. They write:

In imagining a vibrant but endangered Yiddish-speaking homeland for the Jews in an alternate-history Alaska, Michael’s novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union draws freely on both of these Jewish imaginative traditions, these differing modes, making a kind of funhouse-mirror prediction about a Jewish future. But there is another powerful strand in the Jewish way of thinking about the world and our place in it, a kind of imagination that focuses neither on the past with its glories and disasters nor on the future, whether shining or dark. It is the tradition embodied in the final word of the organization on whose behalf we are writing you today: it is the tradition that embraces, and devotes itself, to the imperatives of the now.

What has to happen now, as they argue, is for the State of Israel to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. That requires putting aside both fundamentalist nostalgia and paralyzing fear. Israel can only have a decent present and future if it addresses the Settlements issue and negotiates permanent borders.

(On the USAir Shuttle back to Boston)

10. Never provoke conflict to prove one’s strength or importance or to guard one’s turf.

9. Hold no grudges.

8. Never resent or complain about not being invited to a meeting, but try to attend meetings to which one is invited.

7. Minimize one’s use of air time in conversations and meetings.

6. Conserve scare resources, such as grants, that others could use if you didn’t have them. Minimize all forms of overhead.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of organizations but commit to people even if they are not always effective.

4. Don’t gossip; celebrate other people’s work.

3. Charitably interpret other people’s positions and treat differences of opinion as assets.

2. Use every opportunity to help other people develop skills and reputation.

1. Care about whole people, not just about their opinions or their work.

It is proving unusually hard to tell how many Americans actually voted this year. The current count of votes is about 120 million, but there are clearly absentee and early ballots that remain to be counted. Estimates of how many still need to be tallied range as high as 13 million, although I personally have no idea. Our problem at CIRCLE is that we use the total vote count to calculate youth turnout. Usually, to be consistent, we use the vote count reported by the Associated Press at 6 am on the morning after the election. Using that number this year would suggest that turnout overall was not especially good. That’s possible–conservatives may have sat this one out–but I am hearing reports that there are at least 3 million ballots in California alone that need to be counted.

As a result, we have delayed our usual day-after youth turnout estimate. Instead, we report a range. In essence, the low end of the range (which assumes that almost all votes have been counted) implies a small increase in youth turnout over the relatively high baseline set in 2004. The high end of the range takes youth voting close to a record level.

Regardless, it is clear that young people favored one candidate so strongly that they played a major role in his victory. Under-30s favored Obama over McCain by 66%-32%, an unprecedented tilt. The closest precedent is Ronald Reagan; he took 59% of the youth vote in 1984, and that generation remains conservative today. Another way to make the same point is to note that Obama actually lost the 45-and-older set. He won a decisive victory on the strength of under-30s.