I was still on Roman time the night of the Iowa caucuses and fell asleep to the sights and sounds of election results being posted on CNN. When I awoke, a few hours later, Barack Obama had been declared the winner and as I struggled for consciousness (not to mention some firm footing), I saw his victory speech. Five minutes into it I was tempted to wake my wife and kids but couldn’t be bothered to pause the Tivo to roust them. When Peggy finally watched it on YouTube the next day she said, “I know I’m jet-lagged but that brought tears to my eyes three times.”

And how often in her years of following HRC, whom she has been supporting, has the until-recently presumptive party front runner done that? “Never,” Peggy allowed.

Getting votes and being president should be about more than just movng people, you say; a candidate has to do more than just stir the pot. But did our big melting pot of a nation ever need stirring more? When Obama said, “We are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come,” he wasn’t just preaching to the converted. He was talking to you.

The junior senator from Illinois plainly gave some thought to this address. It had elements of his standard stump speech (which we’ve only seen in bits and pieces on the evening news) but it had reach as well. He knew this was his largest national audience since he spoke at the Democratic convention in 2004 and he showed them how it was done, with a hint of gospel rhythm even, and some rock star touches. When he asked the crowd to “give it up” for his wife Michelle and pointed at her offstage saying, “You! you!” I thought he might burst into song.

What has been funny watching the news since is the sense of discomfort his decisive 38% victory has caused, not just among the Clintonistas but the traditional news commentators. Forget about the usual suspects, the party apartchiks like Paul Begala and William Bennet who are paid to carry water for the establishment. Even the ordinarily even-handed commentators like Jeffrey Toobin sounded as if they were defending the castle, suggesting that any negative campaigning Clinton would do against Obama was more than justified. Circle the wagons, boys.

It reminds me of the early days of punk, when the mainstream rockers derided the new sounds; “oi bands” is how Mick Jagger described the Clash et al; Billy Joel gave an “angry” interview in Rolling Stone and everywhere the lament was the same: New fads come and go but once consumers have tired of this latest hula hoop, they’ll come back for professionalism, musicianship and ten-minute guitar solos. Thirty years later and Mick has called London Calling a great rock album, and Billy Joel is driving off the road out in Long Island.

Joe Strummer is dead, of course, but as anyone who saw Julien Temple’s documentary, The Future Is Unwritten can testify, his spirit lives on. He was no simple punk, not just an anarchist here to ring in a new order. He was an ex-hippie, a Woody Guthrie admirer whose first band was made up of fellow squatters; like Obama, Joe lived in foreign lands growing up and he was forever collecting and indulging in new sounds. He was a uniter, not a divider. And his message could move you to tears.