I have to admit there were tears in my eyes on election night as I watched the images coming from my home town of Chicago. The city as seen from Grant Park was beautiful, but it was the crowd that impressed me the most. That crowd was made up of several hundred thousand Chicagoans, all ages, all races, all smiles, cheering for Illinois Senator and Chicago resident Barack Obama, the first African-American President-elect of the United States.

As the camera panned across the faces, and paused to take in the tears on the face of Jesse Jackson, community organizer, civil rights activist, and former candidate for president, my mind flashed back to 1968. That was the year of the last “political event” I remember taking place in Grant Park.

I was 17 years old, about to begin my senior year in high school, and the images I remember coming from Grant Park were of the Chicago Police beating demonstrators protesting the war in Vietnam. The Democratic Party’s nominating convention was taking place at the International Amphitheatre just one mile away. The incumbent Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, had decided not to seek a second term, his popularity sagging due to the unpopular war.

1968 had already seen the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and the riots which followed; the assassination of New York Senator Robert Kennedy who was campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president; and armies from five Warsaw Pact countries marching into Czechoslovakia, a serious Cold War challenge to the West. The protestors in Grant Park in 1968 saw themselves as disenfranchised and my friends and I wondered if there was any hope left for the nation and the world.

Of course, we did survive those troubled times and there were some very good times in the next 40 years. But the last few have not been good. We have another extremely unpopular President; an unpopular war; an economic crisis and still people who felt disenfranchised, at least until election night, 2008, when the disenfranchised had their say.

There were tears in my eyes because I saw hope in the eyes of the people of Chicago as they cheered the President-elect. There was hope too in the eyes of the people who gathered in Atlanta, in Harlem, in Rockefeller Plaza and at the gates of the White House. There was hope in the eyes of the people waiting in line the next morning to buy historic editions of their local newspapers in cities and towns across the nation.

There is hope because Americans turned out in large numbers to cast a vote in favor of optimism. We voted in favor of a candidate who told us we need to be vigilant but we need not be scared; we can achieve for ourselves even as we help others to achieve; we can express our beliefs and still be tolerant of people who have a different view; and we can lead by the power of our example, rather than the power of our weapons. We voted for a candidate who was different from any we had elected before. For those of us who remember the turmoil of the ‘60s, it was a moment we thought we would never see. It was a moment which could only happen in America.

Senator Obama’s victory does not mean the end of race as an issue in this country. He did not win a majority of the white vote nationwide, unless you take out the states of the former Confederacy. But he did win more white votes than John Kerry, a white candidate, won in 2004 in most states. He even won the state of Virginia, capitol of the former Confederacy, on the strength of the white voters who switched parties and the black voters who turned out in record numbers.

Even more striking in this time of economic crisis is the fact that Senator Obama was the choice of 52% of the voters who earn more than $200,000 a year.. even though he made it clear they will most likely see an increase in their taxes. These voters, traditionally Republican, appear to have decided that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. These voters, joining with the low-income voters who usually vote Democratic, made the difference.

Republican pundits, including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, have argued that the election does not signal a change in the electorate’s ideological leanings. They say it only reflects a rejection of the failed policies of an unpopular President.

They may be correct, but I don’t think it matters. Ideology is important to the party loyalists, the so-called “base”. The rest of us just want government to work, however we define it. Most of us do not believe the government has been working well lately, and we voted for change. All the Democrats have to do is make government work. If they succeed, the new coalition of low and high income voters may be willing to give them a long run.

That is, of course, a very tall order. President Obama will inherit a list of unsolved crises long enough to make one wonder why anyone would want the job. Both the President-elect and the Democratic leaders of Congress have wisely cautioned the country to be patient, saying that fixing the problems will take time and that all the goals may not be achieved, even by the end of a four year term.

But in place of the seemingly endless string of doom and gloom pronouncements coming in recent years from the now lame-duck administration we finally have something new. From President-elect Barack Obama we have a message of optimism.. a message of hope. I can see it in his eyes.