Whoever wins, the 2008 election is one for the history books.

this is a transformational moment in American politics.

Barack Obama's good fortune has been to be his party's candidate at a moment of pent-up desire for change

voters are perfectly aware of the colossal human and financial cost of the war in Iraq, and the damage it has done to America's good name and moral authority,

McCain is identified with the old.

eerily quiet shopping malls

empty homes with their changed locks

the old 20th-century certainty that in America children would automatically be better off than their parents had been swept away by a decade of stagnation, even decline, in living standards for all but the very wealthy.

The assumption that prosperity is an eternal entitlement is no more.

educational standards, the decrepit state of much of the country's infrastructure, the chronic failure to provide health care for all,

something has gone terribly wrong