A little more than a month from now, the Bush era will give way to Obama’s America. Rarely has the nation been as enthusiastically engaged in the political process as it is today. But where do we go from here? What does Obama’s America mean?

This is precisely the sort of question we always intended Democracy to address. And so, in this issue, we have asked five of the country’s leading progressive voices to analyze the state of five central American values. Harvard Law Professor and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren looks at opportunity, Duke Law’s Jedediah Purdy considers community, the University of Chicago’s Geoffrey Stone takes on liberty, NYU’s Michael Waldman examines democracy, and Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson looks at equality. All these authors come down hard on the Bush Administration, but they also hold out hope that President-elect Obama will resurrect the values that so many Americans hold dear.