Barack Obama, the son of a father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, was elected the nation’s 44th president Tuesday night, breaking the ultimate racial barrier to become the first black American to claim the country’s highest office.
A nation that was founded by slave owners and seared by civil war and generations of racial strife delivered a smashing Electoral College victory to the 47-year-old, first-term senator from Illinois, who forged a broad, multiracial, multiethnic coalition. His victory was a leap in the march toward equality: When Obama was born, people with his skin color could not even vote in parts of America, and many were killed for trying.
On a night for Democrats to savor, they not only elected Obama the nation’s 44th president but padded their majorities in the House and Senate, and come January will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.
A survey of voters leaving polling places showed the economy was by far the top Election Day issue. Six in 10 voters said so, and none of the other top issues — energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care — was picked by more than one in 10.
The tens of thousands celebrating in Grant Park on the Lake Michigan shoreline in Chicago — where Obama was set to appear — shrieked and leaped with joy when they saw on the giant video monitors that CNN declared Obama the 44th president of the United States. They hugged strangers. They knelt down and prayed.
And they cried.
Throughout the evening, the crowd had burst into chants of “Yes we can!” But a button pinned on the lapel of one Obama supporter captured the spirit of the moment better: “Yes we did.”
By the time Obama and the rest of the soon-to-be first family walked onstage, the crowd in Grant Park and the surrounding area had grown to more than 240,000, according to the city’s emergency management office.
“Hello, Chicago,” Obama said, greeting the crowd.
Mellie Tess, 26, hollered: “Welcome, Mr. President!”
Obama accepts victory
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” he said in his first public words after winning the election.
He appeared on stage with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, set to become the first family of color ever to occupy the White House. Every family member dressed in black and red.
To his daughters, Obama said: “I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.” He’d promised his daughters a dog this fall, whether he won or lost.
To those who voted against him, Obama said, “I will be your president, too.”
“Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century,” he said. “There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and, for us to lead, alliances to repair.”
He was already suggesting a second term to accomplish his goals, saying he expected “setbacks and false starts.”
“We may not get there in one year or even one term,” he said. “But America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there.”
He and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009.
His rival, Republican John McCain, remains in the Senate. Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, returns to Alaska as governor after a tumultuous debut on the national stage.
Obama was winning in every state his party carried four years ago, including Pennsylvania, which McCain worked vigorously to pry from the Democratic column. Obama was also making significant inroads into Republican turf, carrying Ohio and Virginia, and won the swing states of New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico, which backed President Bush in 2004.
The major TV networks and the Associated Press called the race for Obama within minutes of the last polls closing in the West, and moments later, the Obama campaign announced that McCain had called the president-elect to concede.
McCain gives up his quest
“The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly,” McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona.
McCain prevailed in a band of states that comprise a shrinking Republican base, mainly in the South, the Plains and parts of the interior West.
Obama won California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
McCain had Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
He also won at least three of Nebraska’s five electoral votes, with the other two in doubt.
McCain, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, a generation older than his rival at 72, was making his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.
A conservative, he stressed his maverick’s streak. And although a Republican, he did what he could to separate himself from an unpopular president.
President Bush added his congratulations from the White House, where his tenure runs out on Jan. 20. “May God bless whoever wins tonight,” he had told dinner guests earlier.
Obama’s explosive path to White House
Obama will be one of the youngest presidents in American history, the first born outside the continental United States (in Hawaii) and only the third to move directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House.
He burst on the national political scene just more than four years ago, with an electrifying keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama’s soaring speech previewed themes he would reprise in his presidential bid, including a call to end the partisanship symbolized by a country divided into Republican red and Democratic blue.
Months after that address, Obama won his U.S. Senate seat, and there was immediate talk of a run for president. The speculation, however, vastly understated the challenge facing Obama, who, by his own admission, entered the crowded Democratic field as a decided underdog. His victory over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton after a long, contentious primary season was, in itself, one of the great political upsets of all-time.
Contrary to the wisdom at the time, the battle did not sap but rather strengthened Obama. He built campaign organizations in traditionally Republican states, like Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Indiana, that came into play in the fall thanks to the groundwork laid in the spring.
Obama also became a better, more substantive candidate and a much stronger debater, which served him well in his three match-ups with McCain.
His unflappable performance on stage and steady response to the Wall Street meltdown helped allay voter concerns about Obama’s judgment, maturity and readiness to assume office, undercutting what was perhaps McCain’s strongest argument against the freshman lawmaker.
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