It’s been a tumultuous week for me, personally. Ever-increasing anxiety until election day, elation the day of, depression for the two days following, and, finally, time for reflection. I’d imagine many California (and Florida, Arkansas and Arizona) voters went through the same emotional roller coaster.

First, having Barack Obama elected to be our 44th president is a milestone that all of us should be cherishing, for a number of reasons. The fact that he is both African-American, and the product of a mixed-race marriage (illegal until just a couple of generations ago in many parts of the country), is testament to how far we’ve come as a nation. The fact that he is the grandson of a Muslim, grew up abroad for a time, and has a non-Western European name are milestones unto themselves. They defy many of the unfortunate stereotypes that grew about the United States in the previous eight-year absence of good news.

But in a few underreported ways, Obama’s ascension to the presidency points to triumphs of a different sort. First, the era of divisive, identity politics has, at the very least, taken a hiatus. The religious right’s strangehold on electoral success and its influence on domestic legislation and foreign policy stance have also taken a backseat to a more broad coalition of groups interested in greater inclusiveness, cooperation and dialogue. The electorate is now more likely to give the president-elect reign to take a different approach with respect to health care, financial sector regulation, foreign relations, and other matters, when trying a different approach was previously considered anathema (”appeasement”, “socialism”, etc).

In two important ways, though, Obama crossed the Rubicon. First, he was able to raise a majority of his campaign contributions from 3 million contributors across the country. We’re talking small, $25, $50, amounts. What this means is that the largest “lobbyist group” he is beholden to are, effectively, the American people, who will be holding him responsible to his entire platform, not just a set of pet interests. If he doesn’t deliver? The largest, by far, source of reelection revenue will dry up.

Second, Obama is going to draw on the strong wellspring of support that was granted him from the very start, domestically and abroad. The perception of our country, by its own citizens, and former critics outside the country, was turn on its head after almost a decade of having almost every negative stereotype of Americans confirmed by the actions of an irresponsible government. Sure, with high expectations, there is bound to be disappointment, as unrealistic expectations are confronted with realpolitik. But I firmly believe that Obama’s judiciousness and his surprisingly consistent message and refrain from hyperbole on the campaign trail will suit him well as he sets out to make tremendous changes in the way our government does things.

The fact that he will be working with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress won’t hurt, either.

Moving to a more specific struggle, that of marriage equality, in the midst of a streak of bad news in four states, there is an ember of optimism. Despite the continual passage of anti-equality legislation, each subsequent election and poll shows the gap narrowing. With even Republicans and evangelicals saying that gay couples deserve equal protection under the law, with only the institution of marriage itself something they are defending for heterosexual use only, the debate has taken on a different tenor than it had when gay people were routinely described as perverts, deviants, and sick, by those opposing the granting of equal rights. If the predominant debate is one of nomenclature, then we have also come a long way on the sexual orientation civil rights front.

Finally, in the aftermath of an unusually long campaign that involved record numbers of (especially young) people, one wonders if the momentum of political engagement will continue and spread into both local and international awareness and involvement. Should be an interesting couple of years (you do know that the 2010 elections are just 24 months away?).

This past week saw a powderkeg of an issue lit by the McCain campaign, or the Obama campaign, depending on who you talk to. Obama claimed that the Republicans would try to scare voters by reminding them that he’s “different” - an allusion to his name, age, background and race (”doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills”).

But is this “playing the race card”? The McCain campaign certainly thought so. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, responded quickly, with, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

But was Obama playing the race card? What exactly is “the race card?”

The way it’s commonly understood, playing the race card means accusing someone of being a racist in order to score political advantage or deflect criticism. Its practice has been levied towards Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton most frequently, although because of their history in politics and ready interest in speaking on behalf of the entire black “community” (of approximately 40 million Americans), this is not surprising. It had not been used to describe Barack Obama, who has studiously avoided mentioning racism, beyond his deep, balanced treatise on America’s complex history with race, after the Reverend Wright controversy.

It’s difficult, unless you’re hypersensitive to it, to see “my opponents will play up how I’m different from the classic US presidential profile in many different ways” as meaning “if you don’t vote for me, that means you’re racist.”

But the hypersensitive might exactly be the group that the McCain campaign would like to exploit. What the McCain campaign, which has been much more heavily reliant on negative campaigning against his opponent than Obama’s, has been quick to play as an opportunity for itself is the “race-card card,” or tapping into white resentment against perceived use of the race card by African-Americans.

Resentment against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton reached a fever pitch last year during the Don Imus controversy, when Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team players “nappy headed hos“. Right-wing bloggers and commentators at right-wing sites like The Free Republic and Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air fumed with indignation. (For a different reason, some black commentators also wondered both why Jackson and Sharpton felt the need to inject themselves in the debate, and why right-wing pundits were obsessed with their reaction.)

But did Obama’s original comment have any merit? Has he been an target, or did he raise the spectre of racism to a naive electorate? Let’s look at the attempts to highlight (or even fabricate) Obama’s “differentness”:

• conservative online magazine Insight publishes story alleging that Obama attended a Muslim religious school, a madrassa (not true)
• Larry Johnson alleges that he has a video showing Michelle Obama calling white people “whitey” (not true)
• many right wingers feel the need to highlight the fact that Obama’s middle name is Hussein (which is true, but would most certainly never be mentioned if it were John, or Sidney, for example)
• Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is constantly called a racist (which is not true; referring to the disgrace of the US’s racist past does not make you a racist)

While these sorts of rumors are not directly attributable to the McCain campaign, they are popular memes circulated in right-wing circles, and can only help McCain’s candidacy. And the campaign is quick to invoke the race-card card, while it largely remains passive when stories that can be easily proven to be untrue are circulated.

Publius at Obsidian Wings had this to say:

But the bigger problem here is that the Race Card Chorus plays on white resentment — which remains a poisonous brew. I’m a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there — we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front. The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it’s hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It’s not so much animosity toward people who are different — it’s the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims. That’s why race is a losing issue for Obama — it’s not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they’re white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community). And so this whole “race card” business feeds these flames (quite consciously, I think).

The race-card card might be more effective than the race card itself.