Presidential results history in the making
It's U.S. President Barack Obama
WASHINGTON
LEE-ANNE GOODMAN
The Canadian Press
Barack Obama was swept to the White House on Tuesday by enraptured Americans who embraced his message of hope and turned their backs on centuries of racial division by electing their first black president.
The Illinois senator, born to a white mother and an African father 47 years ago, was elected in a momentous day that many black Americans believed they would never see.
It came some 232 years after the country was founded on the principle that all men were created equal.
“What we are witnessing in America is a non-violent revolution,” Congressman John Lewis, an iconic figure of the civil rights movement, said Tuesday night as the results rolling in suggested the Obama juggernaut was unstoppable.
“It is a revolution of values. It is a revolution of ideas.”
News of Obama’s win prompted jubilant celebrations across the United States as millions of weeping and exhilarated Americans took to the streets.
It seemed less an election and more a coronation for a man who inspired people from every walk of life with his consistent message of hope, change and promise, and his pledge to end the divisive politics of President George W. Bush.
In Obama’s hometown of Chicago, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in a city park to celebrate their native son’s entry into the history books on an unseasonably warm night.
Thousands of cheering people also assembled in New York’s Times Square in a scene more reminiscent of New Year’s Eve than election night.
John McCain, the Republican nominee, also promised change and attempted repeatedly to distance himself from Bush, but it was a message that apparently fell on deaf ears.
“We have come to the end of a long journey — the American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly,” McCain said in a gracious concession speech in Phoenix.
Upon mention of Obama’s name, the crowd booed, but McCain hushed them, referring to his rival for the White House as a “good man.”
“His success alone commands my respect for his ability and perserverence,” he said. “This is a historic election and I recognize the special significance this has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.”
It was considered a watershed moment in American history.
The U.S. economy is in a shambles. America’s prestige abroad has been battered. Victory in two wars in far-flung Iraq and Afghanistan remains elusive.
Obama’s popularity among voters reflected the fervent desire of millions of Americans to chart a new course for a country that many believe has lost its way in the past eight years.
He continued to climb in the polls throughout the campaign. Some suggest the widespread acceptance of him as a viable presidential candidate represents the passing of a torch to a new generation, one that’s racially diverse, accepting of minorities, socially progressive and weary of old-style politics.
Obama was adored by major blocs of voters, including young Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 who favoured him almost 3-1 over McCain, and African-Americans, millions of whom registered to vote for the first time in order to cast their ballots for him.
Women and Hispanic voters also flocked to him.
At a Washington, D.C., subway station on Tuesday, one black man stood in tears on the platform as he spoke of how he’d voted earlier that day.
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Sam Richardson, 65, said as he wiped tears from his face. “I just would never have believed it could happen in my lifetime.”
McCain, a moderate Republican distrusted by his party’s social conservatives, won the party’s nomination on the promise of a new direction for the United States.
The Vietnam war hero represented a repudiation of those very socially conservative ideals that had been the bedrock of his party for decades. He effectively ran his campaign against the Republicans.
Nonetheless, polls had suggested for weeks that Obama was poised to become the first African-American to be elected president.
Election day was the culmination of almost two years of politicking by McCain and Obama, who both fought tough battles during the primary season to win their respective party’s nominations.
Their showdown against one another was bare-knuckled, but the economic crisis benefited Obama, who dealt with it with assured calm, compared to McCain’s erratic responses to the financial meltdown.
McCain also faced relentless criticism for his choice of the much-maligned Sarah Palin as his running mate. After causing a brief bump in the polls for the Arizona senator soon after he chose her, the self-styled hockey mom and social conservative was a consistent drag on the Republican ticket.
Many Americans, including lifelong and prominent Republicans, said they could not vote for McCain because of Palin and would cast their ballots for Obama instead.
Palin was emotional during McCain’s concession speech, her eyes welling with tears on occasion.