Over the last few years, whenever I learned that someone had died before 9-11, I found myself thinking that he or she was lucky not to have lived to see what we saw.

Now, I feel sorry for the people who didn’t make it to November of 2008 — Paul Newman, George Carlin, and so many others, including my mother.

Barack Obama and the Democrats won big in 2008 by being the first to use the new communications technologies properly. A lot of winners down through history have done that. Reagan and the religious right used direct-mail fundraising, FDR used the radio, Hitler used movie-making.

The problem, of course, is that one’s enemies can learn the new tech as well. To stay in power, the Democrats will have to use their power to deliver big for the American people — starting with national health care. And they’ll only have one or two election cycles to do it.

In the weeks after the election, as Obama announced his Cabinet, the media were full of reports of progressive disappointment at the Clinton-era choices. People are missing the point. It is up to the American people to do the heavy lifting in getting a progressive program through. We’ll get nothing we don’t organize and fight for.

Barack Obama got his start as a community-organizer. He understands this.