What historians call a watershed

Helen (Babe) Walker, seventy-three years old, who lives in the Appalachian mining town of Glouster, Ohio …, writes:

“I think that the residents here in Glouster are getting accustomed to the fact that we will be having a black president. They think it is not a bad idea.”

And Roger Catt, the retired Wisconsin farmer who told me that “McCain is more of the same, and Obama is the end of life as we know it,” will be voting for the end of life as we know it.

George Packer