Big night in politics and there are a lot of different ways to read what happened.  What I took away from the result comes from how reality seems to be converging with Hollywood.  

My memory is a bit fuzzy but let me see if I can’t paint the picture… On the Democractic side, a minority wins the primary by taking on the entrenched party interests and running on a positive message of change.  On the Republican side, the nominee is a maverick Senator with a mountain of foreign policy experience that is not completely acceptable to ‘Christian conservatives’.  Sound familiar… Obama vs. McCain or Congressman Matt Santos vs. Senator Arnold Vinick.

Many people, Democrats and independents in particular, watched The West Wing not just because it was a good drama but because they identified with the political message and themes of the show.  Although President Bartlett has been campaigning for Gov. Richardson, Senator Obama has represented those themes better than anyone else in the Democratic field – and in my opinion, that is why he won.

Who knows whether it will actually be Obama versus McCain, but after last night it certainly seems a lot more likely.  From my perspective that would certainly be a great race - I can only hope that if that is the race, the end result also mirrors what happened on TV.