When the news broke of Obama’s victory, his young staffers couldn’t hold back any longer. After almost two years of toiling for a campaign known for no drama, they punched the air and openly wept. There were around 240,000 people gathered in and around Grant Park, just a few minutes from their campaign headquarters, but this was unlike any other big event in the long presidential election of 2008. This one was, as the staffers kept repeating to each other, unreal.

If their feelings were unbelievable, so was the crowd filing through in front of them, within minutes of the networks declaring Barack Obama president-elect. There were the political elites that have worked with and for Obama: Rahm Emanuel, his likely chief of staff, Bill Daley, the former commerce secretary, and Howard Dean, the DNC chair whose 50-state strategy was largely vindicated by sweeping national gains on Tuesday. There was Kerry Washington, the talented young actress who starred in The Last King of Scotland and Ray. Then there was Oprah Winfrey,the queen of talk show TV, who helped lift Obama’s campaign when it most needed support, as it tried to reach new voters in the depths of an Iowa winter.

As for the president-elect himself, his opening words seemed to answer the very sense of unreality felt by those who have worked so closely with him for the longest campaign.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he said, “who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”