It's just a little over five years since "Lexington," the pseudonymous American columnist in the respected British journal The Economist, dismissed California as "the left out coast."

"California," he wrote in April 2003, "has always prided itself on getting to the future first – on pioneering the suburban affluence of the 1950s, the tax-cutting revolution of the 1970s and the high-tech boom of the 1990s. So consider a horrible possibility: that now it is the 'new America' in the West that just doesn't 'get it' … and the 'old America' in the East that is grappling with the future.

"Ever since September 11th, Californians have been out of the American loop, flummoxed by the war on terrorism and locked into a pre-September 11th mindset. Far from pioneering the future, the Californian upper crust seems stuck in the 1990s, maybe even the 1960s."

Although Lexington echoed some other conservatives in the early years of the Bush era, it was always a wacky idea. California was too liberal, was the rap, too Democratic, had too many minorities, too many gays, was too obsessed with the environment – was, in the end, simply not a serious enough place in an age of terrorism and clashing cultures.

Last week's election should have, as the Brits like to say, "put paid" to all that. America long ago started to catch up with California's doubts about the war in Iraq, about the Bush presidency, even, albeit slowly, with the prospect that, like California today, America itself will in another forty years have a majority-minority population.

There were several milestones last week. The election of the first African American president, who could have won even without the votes of the left coast, was only one. Another was the arrival of a younger national electorate that understands better, and seems more comfortable with, the country's changing demographics, its growing cultural diversity, and its place in a world it can no longer dominate as it once did.

Even the vote on Proposition 8, which will (temporarily at least) restore California's ban on same-sex marriage, reflected a huge generational split. While the measure narrowly carried by about 5 percentage points, the 20 percent of California voters who are between the ages of 18 and 29 voted against it by a margin of 61-39.

That's just about the inverse of the vote for Proposition 22, which banned gay marriage eight years ago. The change from 61 percent to a 52.5 percent majority is indicative of the trend, not just in California, but most likely even in many of the other states that have in recent years enacted gay marriage bans. The very fact that they have found them necessary at all is a sign of the drift.

There's one sad irony in the vote on Proposition 8. According to the exit polls, its passage, driven by the fright campaign of the religious right, depended largely on the votes of minorities; it would have failed on the votes of whites alone. But 70 percent of African Americans voted for it, even as Barack Obama, also on the strength of minority votes, broke one of the most symbolic of cultural barriers.

What made the irony particularly tragic is that the vote comes not so long after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1967 decision striking down state laws against interracial marriage.

"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," said Chief Justice Earl Warren in the court's decision. "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival …. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as (race)… is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law."

There's no race discrimination in Proposition 8, but its claim that it upholds "traditional marriage" is no more defensible than were similar arguments for the miscegenation laws when the Supreme Court struck them down. In another 40 years it may be regarded as being just as contrary to "the basic civil rights of man."

If Barack Obama's black father and white mother had moved to Virginia when he was born, they would have been thrown in prison. Last week, Virginians voted to make their son president.

So where does all that put us on Lexington's map? The restored ban on gay marriage leaves us roughly even with most of the country, excepting only Massachusetts and Connecticut. But once again we seem to have narrowly rejected an initiative similar to laws in many other states that would have required minors to notify their parents before they could get an abortion.

Toted all up, Californians showed that we aren't left out, just a few years ahead. Without any of the votes of the "left out coast," Obama would still be the president-elect. Now if the Legislature's old-America obstructionists would just allow us a functioning democratic system of state government.