You want a transformational moment, I’ll give you one.  Try this title on for size: Gov. Michael Nutter.

No, Philly’s new mayor hasn’t  been elected governor of Pennsylvania, but the results of Tuesday’s election show that he could be.

Conventional political wisdom was that a black man could not run in Pennsylvania and win.

So much for that theory.

This was a state where the John McCain had spent mucho time and money to win. On Tuesday, it wasn’t even a contest.

Barack Obama defeated the Republican in a walk.  His statewide margin was 9 percentage points, or about 650,000 votes.

And while the rest of the nation is considering how the Obama victory re-aligned the politics of America - with the Democrat winning a dozen previously Red States - here in old Pennsylvania our own re-alignment continues apace.

It began with Ed Rendell.  It carried through to John Kerry.  It burst open with Obama.

To put it briefly, southeast Pennsylvania rules the state.

It has consistently been producing hyper-majorities for Democratic candidates in recent years and it reached a crescendo on Tuesday.

Obama defeated McCain by 2-1 in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties.  He got 66% of the vote and won by a margin of 655,000.

This election completes the transformation of the Philly suburbs from red to blue.  Make that deep blue.

Combine Obama’s margin the suburbs (+197,000 votes) with the hyper-majority by which he won Philadelphia (+458,000) and you have a combination of vote power that cannot be beat - no matter how well you do in the rest of the state.

Not that McCain did well in the rest of the state either. He consistently fell short of President Bush’s 2004 performance - even in traditionally Republican areas.

The most surprising was in the Republican T, the swath of counties in central Pennsylvania that are the heartland of GOP strength.  In the six counties that make up the base of the T, McCain did win on Tuesday, but only by a margin of 54-45%.  Bush got 64% four years ago in the same area.  McCain even lost one of the counties, Dauphin, which is home to Harrisburg.

The Republicans can rightly attribute McCain’s loss to the drag Bush and the economy put on the ticket. They can also argue that those counties in central Pennsylvania that strayed will return to the fold.

But, let’s be real, suburban Philadelphia is lost to them, probably for decades.  And that has repercussions for state politics.

For one thing, it means that the politics of the state is going to tilt liberal. It is going to tilt southeast.  It is going to tilt Democratic.

And - other than Ed Rendell - can you name for me the most popular liberal politician in the southeast?  Governor…whoops…Mayor Michael Nutter.

You wait and see.