Powerful: If they choose to follow Obama, their self-identification will sink in & their vote will come to seem not a decision but an affiliation.

Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal:

A week and a half after the election, the idea has settled in that America just threw long. People hadn't heard of Mr. Obama two years ago, they know they don't really know him now, and they just gave him the presidency. America threw long, and America is praying for a dazzling reception. People want him to catch the ball.

What is striking is how much hopeful support there has come to be. Mr. Obama's approval ratings this week hit 70%. They'll go higher. Part of this is people saying: We want you to do well. As you prosper, our nation prospers.

The vote will prove to be a realigning one if Mr. Obama does well enough over a long enough period that people come to see themselves not as voters who picked him but as people who are his followers. If they choose to follow him, their self-identification as Democrats will sink in and formalize, and the vote they cast in 2008 will come to seem not a decision but an affiliation. Without affiliation, everything remains in play and will be in play in the coming years. If Mr. Obama doesn't catch the pass and cross the goal line, it will mean this election marked a moment, not a movement.

It is obvious that Mr. Obama's people have learned from the experiences of Bill Clinton and will continue to try not to begin with a gays-in-the-military, my-wife-is-revolutionizing-health-care series of errors that will self-brand them as to the left of the mainstream. They do not want to do anything that will leave the middle-right saying "Uh-oh" and begin to push away.