All Tuesday, the television shots of the U.S. capital were poor. Mist and drizzle obscured the ideal backdrop for what was seen by many as a defining presidential election of American history.

But at a little past 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time it didn’t matter what the city looked like. Barack Obama had been declared the president-elect of the United States. The streets of Georgetown began to flow with ecstatic young supporters of Obama. The neighborhood once derided by John McCain as the too frequent host of elite cocktail parties was now a conduit for a different sort of energy. Trailed by honking taxicabs, some weighted with passengers whose limbs flailed out the windows, others empty, and their predominately immigrant and black drivers, young people from Georgetown University, dressed in sweatpants and tight jeans, flip-flops and stilettos, marched on M St. chanting “Yes We Did! Yes we Did!”

Revolution was in the streets. These kids, many just 18-years-old, may have thought that they were the ones who created it. Between 10 and 14-years-old when George W. Bush was first elected, and gradually alienated by his reaction to 9/11 and his handling of the Iraq War many had been passionately and personally involved.

Inside a television studio on M Street, a 24-year old hockey-player turned teleprompter operator checked CNN’s electoral map as he guided the moderator for ARD, Germany’s most-watched news network, through his almost 100 segments of election night coverage. Virginia’s numbers were against Obama and he was angry. “I worked so hard there,” he said. His updated vote counts varied by hundreds of votes. The channel’s political commentators began to ask him for input.

Outside, kids continued to flow by jubilant. Tall, short, athletic, overweight, statuesque, humble. They walked, and then they ran. Some had no idea where they were going. They were just following the crowd. Others knew. M Street spills into Pennsylvania Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue leads to the White House.

Along the way 51st State Tavern blared MSNBC as a clean-shaven young man wearing a suit walked out.

A Frenchman from Paris walked in. He asked if you had to specify what beer you wanted and whether you tip the bartender. He had arrived the Friday before to work in TV production. He got two lagers and repeated how lucky his timing was. He was 200 pages into Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father.”

The U.S., he said is capable of electing a black man, precisely because of our history of immigration and racism. France isn’t ready yet. The immigration in France is just beginning, he said, and most French have not spent any time with a Muslim or an Arab.

“We are the first generation that grew up with Arabs,” said the 30-year-old. “I think that change will come, maybe not soon, but it will come,” he said as he slowly drank his beer. Most immigrants don’t yet know whether they are from Morocco, Algeria or France, he said. They are first-generation immigrants.

In front of the International Monetary Fund, the subject of furious protests by disenfranchised young people in 2000, a private security guard gave high-fives to passersby.

Waves of students seemed to roll back through the groups going to the White House, hugging, high-fiving and chanting. I asked why they left; they urged us to continue on.

A stern-faced cop and his companion in front of the old executive building were the first indication of the limited police presence.

The crowd began to come together and we dove into the teeming masses on the glistening street in front of the glowing White House. Thousands of people had accumulated, many young. Later, the crowd became more diverse in age and race.

“Grace Kohn said you can suck my dick Bush,” said Kohn, a student. Outgoing President George W. Bush had celebrated his wife’s birthday with coconut cake and a gift of earrings that night inside the White House.

Alex Rice, an 18-year-old from George Washington University took a different tack. “I love Obama and support this country,” he said. His disillusionment with Bush came when he was 13, he said, when the United States went to war with Iraq. “Finally we have a president that represents us.” There were chants of U-S-A even.

The Frenchman saw his first American flag draped across the bare back of a bicycle rider. It was one of a few there. He was surprised. The French flag after years of representing national pride, became a symbol of racist nationalism with the campaign by Jean Marie LePen. It became a regular symbol of hyper-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment when waved at football games. But leading up to the election of Sarkozy, that nationalism began to change to suit the times. The people reclaimed it, ironically by the political posturing of Sarkozy.

It was the political posturing of the Republican party that in the end drove Dana Mozie, “the first hip-hop producer for a sitting president,” to the Obama party that night at The Park on Fourteenth, and then, alone, to the White House.

A hip-hop producer in the early 90’s for the group Salt-n-Pepa, he helped bring hip-hop to mainstream America. Starting in 2000, he worked inside the White House under Bush on so-called outreach efforts to the black community. He emerged from those experiences, as did other “guys like me who were surrogates,” disillusioned.

“Republicans never would go to the ghetto,” he said, and as a result would never get the black vote. With Obama campaigning in poor black neighborhoods he noted something special in this candidate.

Still it was difficult for this black candidate to get elected, he said. “One drop of black blood and it costs 670 million dollars,” said Mozie, referring to the cost of the Obama campaign.

But now, the Obama allows for the “Race card” to be thrown out, and “allows for a real sense of inclusiveness,” in America.

The rain had stopped for a while now and Mozie, a dapper man around forty, put his umbrella down and looked wide-eyed at the people who continued to flow past.

“I thought it was a moment for black people, but it tapped something in other people too,” he said.

Mozie had been to the 54th and the 55th inaugurations, but, he said emphatically, “This is the original inaugural parade.”

The Frenchman believed that there would be people at the Lincoln Memorial. There were not. Instead, people squeezed through the tightening crowd on Pennsylvania Ave. “America is back,” a person said. There were diminutive Latinas, and tall Asians. The fancier election night parties began to spill forth their participants near one o’clock in the morning. Many paused in astonishment before entering the raucous crowd.

“Obama didn’t just change the party,” said Mozie, “he changed the paradigm.”

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