A jubilant crowd cheered Barack Obama on Tuesday as the nation’s first African-American president-elect vowed to be a president for all of America.
“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 told a crowd of 125,000 people in Chicago’s Grant Park.
“Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America,” he said.
Speaking in soaring rhetoric of the chance for an end to cynicism, fear and doubt about the power of democracy, the Illinois senator spoke to an emotional crowd surrounded by clear bulletproof screens on his left and right.
He sprinkled his address with references to the civil rights struggle that has led to him being elected the country’s first black president. To those who voted against him, he said, “I will be your president, too.”
In his first speech as victor, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead.
“The greatest of a lifetime,” he said, “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”
He added, “There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.”
After a gracious concession speech from vanquished rival John McCain, Obama praised the service of the Arizona senator, who served years in the military and as a Vietnam POW.
“He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader,” he said, adding that he looks forward to working with him in the future.
Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009. Obama will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and trying to end two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.
In his speech, Obama invoked the words of Lincoln and echoed John F. Kennedy. “So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder,” he said.
Obama has said his first order of presidential business will be to tackle the economy. He has also pledged to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.
When historians look back at the 2008 presidential landslide, they won’t focus on the fact that Barack Obama — soon to be our 44th President and our first African American commander-in-chief — ran a smart and steady campaign. They won’t focus on William Ayers or Joe the Plumber or socialism or racism. They won’t debate whether John McCain blew it by targeting Pennsylvania or avoiding the press or ignoring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or picking Sarah Palin. They won’t remember the robocalls or “cling” or the Paris Hilton ad or the crazy chick who carved the B into her face. The pundits filling airtime on their 24-hour news channels might have cared, but posterity won’t.
No, when historians analyze the 2008 campaign, they’re going to remember that the two-term Republican president had 20 percent approval ratings, that the economy was in meltdown, and that Americans didn’t want another Republican president. They’ll also remember that Barack Obama was a change candidate in a change election. And of course they’ll remember that America elected a biracial leader less than a half-century after Jim Crow. But that’s just about all they’ll remember. Politics is a lot simpler than the pundits pretend.
The Republican recriminations will be ugly, but John McCain was probably the most electable candidate the party had: a genuine war hero with an impressive record of public service that didn’t always include marching in lockstep with George W. Bush. He threw some Hail Mary passes — Palin, the “suspension” of his campaign — but he didn’t have much of a choice against a Democratic tide. He was the right guy in the wrong year. If Washington Republicans decide that he lost because he was too squishy on immigration, or too pro-regulation in his response to the economic crisis, or too mavericky, they could find themselves cocooning in the wilderness for a long time. (See pictures of John McCain’s final push on the campaign trail.)
Remember what eight years of Republican rule has wrought: Missing weapons of mass destruction, the promises we’d be greeted as liberators, Jessica Lynch, torture, the disintegration of Afghanistan. Also: Enron, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, GM, Chrysler, Social Security privatization, the $700 billion bailout. Also: Brownie, John Ashcroft covering up that bare-breasted statue at the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales politicizing the Justice Department, Harriet Miers, the oil lobbyist who edited those global warming reports. Also: Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens. Also: the vice president shot a guy, and the president almost choked to death on a pretzel.
And McCain still almost won Virginia! It’s going down to the wire in Florida! All things considered, that’s a pretty impressive showing.
The pundits are already warning that Obama could overreach, that Democratic congressional leaders are still unpopular, that this is still a center-right country. But it wasn’t tonight. Obama will have the luxury of taking office at a time when the GOP is the AIG of electoral politics, when his predecessor has set the lowest bar since James Buchanan, when a supposedly conservative administration just started nationalizing the banking system, when the public is desperate for change. What is it about tonight’s results that suggests Obama should be afraid of progressive action on the cusp of a depression?
But those are questions for another day. The big news tonight is that whether or not there’s a Bradley Effect, it’s nowhere near as big as the Bush Effect. And now a guy who would have had to ride the back of the bus in some of this country when he was a kid has grown up to run this country. Historians will remember that.
Obama
Electoral vote: 338
Popular vote: 54,338,898
McCain
Electoral vote: 156
Popular vote: 49,763,557
Obama wins California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Virginia, Washington
McCain wins Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utha, West Virginia, Wyoming
Supporters cheer during the election night party for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama moved within 75 electoral votes of becoming the first African-American president in history on Tuesday night, winning Ohio, Pennsylvania and several other large Eastern and Midwestern states, according to projections by NBC News.Obama won his home state, Illinois. Republican Sen. John McCain was in a close fight in his home state, Arizona, in a race that NBC News said was too close to call.
Overall, Obama had won 195 of the 270 electoral votes he would need to clinch the election, while McCain had won 85.
Obama took Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, all of them states with hefty electoral vote hauls, NBC News projected. McCain won numerous smaller states, primarily in the South.
Ohio was an especially important bellwether.
President Bush won Ohio in 2004, meaning Obama was able to flip a big Republican state even as McCain failed in his quest to turn over Pennsylvania, which Democratic Sen. John Kerry took four years ago.
Record turnout delays key results
Florida and Virginia were also closely watched, but results there and in other important states were expected to be delayed after record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president.
Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, led in nearly all public opinion polls over McCain, a veteran senator from Arizona. Both campaigns launched get-out-the-vote efforts that led to long lines at polling stations in a contest that Democrats were also hoping would help them expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.
Americans were voting in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.
At New Shiloh Church Ministries on Mastin Lake in Huntsville, Ala., Stephanie Lacy-Conerly brought along a chair, expecting to stay for hours.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s an historical moment.”
(U.S. News) Washington – Two senior aides of John McCain told US broadcaster CNN they see ‘no path to victory’ for the Republican presidential candidate as Democratic rival Barack Obama took a commanding lead after Tuesday’s vote.
The unnamed aides conceded that with Obama capturing the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, while holding onto Democratic strongholds like Michigan, there was no realistic means of capturing the White House.
A total of 270 electoral votes is needed to win in the country’s state-by-state, winner-takes-all electoral system. The count currently stands at 207-135 in favour of Obama. Winning the reliably Democratic western states California, Oregon and Washington would give Obama electoral votes he needs.
No Republican has ever taken the White House without capturing Ohio’s 20 votes.
As we reach 10 p.m. ET, Barack Obama appears to be on the path to 270 electoral votes and the presidency.
The major dominoes to fall over the last hour — Pennsylvania and Ohio for Obama — as well as a series of too-close-to-call states — Indiana, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina — all point to the fact that Obama is the odds-on favorite to be the 44th president of the United States.
Obama currently sits at 195 electoral votes to McCain’s 85. Even if McCain sweeps all of the toss up states we mentioned above, he still stands at only 136 electoral votes. And, with almost certain wins for Obama in Iowa and New Mexico — both of which were carried by Bush in 2004 — Obama would stand fewer than 90 votes away from the presidency.
What we have seen so far on this election night is that Obama has made good on his promise to expand the map — running surprisingly strong in places like Indiana and North Carolina, states which haven’t voted for a Democrat for president in modern political history.
Obama’s ability to expand the map will be traced to two major factors: the widespread unpopularity of President Bush and the Illinois senator’s massive fundraising edge over John McCain.
National exit polling showed that roughly three-quarters of the electorate disapproved of the job that Bush was doing — more than 50 percent doing so strongly.
Couple that dissatisfaction with Bush and Republicans with Obama’s massive fundraising operation, which has funded huge television campaigns and get out the vote organizations in key battleground states, and you begin to get a sense of how the Illinois senator has broken the red state-blue state deadlock of the 2000 and 2004 elections.
A jubilant crowd cheered Barack Obama on Tuesday as the nation’s first African-American president-elect vowed to be a president for all of America.