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A Time of Transformation

"Can it happen? Are the Bush years going to end with the election of a cerebral, liberal black man born to a Muslim goat-herd from Kenya and an atheist farm-girl from Kansas? Will we witness it in less than 48 hours? Whisper it: yes we can. At the midnight hour tomorrow night – unless opinion polls are wrong; more wrong than they have ever been – the era of President Barack Obama will begin.

It's hard to see what this will mean for the world yet. Obama himself has written: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." But we can already map out the four tectonic shifts rumbling beneath this election. They all began before Obama – but his cool stride has brought them into history sooner than many of us thought possible."

The possibility of Obama being elected could well be transformational on a variety of levels - as Johann Hari, writing an op-ed piece in The Independent, believes it will be. Read the complete analysis by Hari here.

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