We’ve all run this marathon before, and we know the sickening feeling of being outsprinted to the tape. We know about coming in second. And we’re so good at it—five out of the last seven races we’ve come up short—that we expect to lose. We heard the trumpets of doom for two solid years: the Democrats will figure out a way to blow it. And they might have, and perhaps even looked certain to after annointing a black man as their candidate. But a funny thing happened on the way to the loser’s circle. Americans proved that the only color more important to them than black is green.

I’m not saying nothing was accomplished. Beating the odds is always a heady feeling. Pulling that creaky old voting lever is essentially herculean—it’s like braking a locomotive, or turning a battleship. It’s fitting that the result is as grand as a change of leadership in this mighty nation. Millions upon millions of people, through the act of pulling that lever, charted a new course for America.

We’ll remember the exact moment when we realized, “My God, Obama really won it.” Maybe it came when Network X or Network Y called the results. Maybe it came when friends telephoned. Maybe it came when Obama stepped to the podium in Chicago as president-elect. For me it came when Jesse Jackson cried.

Jackson had been carefully quarantined from the Obama campaign, as had all the old-guard black leaders. Yet it was Jackson who imprinted himself as the symbol of that historic moment. Interviewed on NPR the next day, he explained what was going through his mind: “Well, on the one hand, I saw President Barack Obama standing there looking so majestic. And I knew that people in the villages of Kenya and Haiti, and mansions and palaces in Europe and China, were all watching this young African-American male assume the leadership to take our nation out of a pit to a higher place. And then, I thought of who was not there.”

Jackson went on to mention Medgar Evars and MLK, but he was probably thinking also of others he couldn’t name—everyone from the thousands of footsoldiers, white and black, in the civil rights struggles of his youth, to the anonymous millions of captured Africans who died during the middle passage. Framed against America's bloody history, and its ongoing and as yet unresolved racial problems, the enormity of what happened on election night can never be overstated.

But the question now is where does Obama go from here? He’s in a tough spot, let's face it. In fact the whole situation is a little bit like Deep Impact. Remember the movie Deep Impact? Morgan Freeman gets to be the president of the United States right when the Earth is about to be destroyed by a comet. Cornell West said basically the same thing: “You can imagine what the black brothers and sisters in the barbershops and beauty salons say: ‘Right when the thing is about to go under, they hand it over to the black man.’”

It’s hard to know where Obama will start, but one thing is certain—a course charted does not automatically make for a course taken. Obama knows which way he should steer the country, but he is surrounded by people who would keep it aimed toward the rocks. His advisory staff is peppered with some of the same neo-liberal hacks that got us into this mess. The key to what happens in the next four years is to make sure Obama listens to the electorate rather than to guys like Robert Rubin and Henry Kissinger.

Obama can be great only if America’s progressive movement keeps the pressure on. The first step is to pay close attention to the names he floats for staff positions. Already it looks as if his Chief of Staff may be neo-liberal NAFTA champion Rahm Emanuel—a curious choice from someone who promised change, and a potentially bad sign of what is to come. So while the race may seem to be over, the truth is we’ve just finished the first lap. By all means, take a quick breather folks, and enjoy the afterglow. I know I will. But soon enough we must all get back on the track and start running again. Because we still have a long way to go.