Yes,Yes We Can!
Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and Kansas mother whose political eloquence and hopeful audacity took the Democratic Party by storm, was elected the nation’s first African-American president Tuesday night — an act Americans would have thought impossible just a generation ago.
Tens of thousands who gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to hear Obama claim victory roared when the race was called. Some, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, wept.
“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,” Obama said in his acceptance speech.
“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
The ability of the 47-year-old Illinois senator to defeat McCain in red-state America — Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were the back-breakers — was simply too much for the Republican ticket to hold off. McCain aides said the Arizona senator, whose own campaign made history by coming back from the political graveyard to win the nomination, called Obama just after 11 p.m. to concede.
President Bush also called Obama to offer his congratulations.
“We have come to the end of a long journey — the American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly,” McCain told his supporters in Phoenix, hailing Obama’s historic election. “Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country.”
Taken with Democratic gains in the House and Senate — 11 House seats and five Senate seats at press time — the new Democratic administration will have unified control of Washington. But Obama also must govern under the specter of two wars and a transcendent economic crisis. He will be joined by Delaware Sen. Joe Biden — a seasoned foreign policy hand who tasted triumph after two unsuccessful White House runs of his own.
Obama won Hawaii, California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
McCain posted victories in Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Mississippi, Kansas, West Virginia, Utah, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, North Dakota, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming.
Democrats had picked up Senate seats in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Colorado and New Hampshire and hoped for more.
“We like what we see,” chief Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN in the understatement of the night.
Tuesday’s decision was the culminating act in a two-year-long process that produced a new president-elect to lead a nation living in dangerous and uncertain times.
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on November 5, 2008. Filed under Local News,Politics.
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