Barack Obama is elected president

Americans turned back two centuries of history Tuesday by choosing Barack Hussein Obama — the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan — as their 44th president.

The election remakes the face of American politics and demolishes one of the most daunting racial barriers.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Obama told more than a hundred thousand supporters in Chicago. “But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

By picking the 47-year-old freshman Illinois senator, voters also signaled a generational change — for the first time choosing a man too young to have seen military service in Vietnam.

They also repudiated eight years of Republican rule under President George W. Bush, sweeping not only Obama to victory but gaining for Democrats at least five seats in the Senate and more than 20 in the House.

The crowd waiting in Chicago’s Grant Park erupted in a joyous celebration shortly after 10 p.m., when media outlets declared Obama the winner.

Obama spoke an hour later: “This is your victory,” he told cheering supporters at the climax of the longest, most expensive presidential campaign in history.

“It’s an American story,” said former Kansas City Council member Alvin Brooks. “I’ve been praying that God would just let me see it. I’m 76 years old and I never expected to.”

Obama’s opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, conceded the election shortly after 10:15 p.m.

“The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly,” McCain told supporters in Phoenix.

“This is an historic election. I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans, and the special pride that must be theirs tonight. … Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country.”

He pledged to help the Obama administration unite the country.

McCain’s quest ended early, as returns from East Coast states showed him falling short in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where the Republican made his strongest stand in the campaign’s final days.

When Ohio turned against him, however, McCain’s run was doomed.

Another key to Obama’s success was breaking into the Mountain West, previously a GOP bastion. Obama won Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and was very close in Montana. He also left a large dent in the Republicans’ Southern strategy, taking Florida and Virginia.

McCain’s closing arguments appeared to have given him Missouri’s 11 electoral votes by a tiny margin. At midnight, McCain led by one-half of 1 percent, with some red county ballots still unreported.

Other unknown results at press time included North Carolina, Indiana and Montana.

As expected, the former prisoner-of-war won Kansas easily, taking the state’s six electoral votes.

At midnight, an Associated Press estimate showed Obama with at least 338 electoral votes, 68 more than he needed to win.

McCain, who struggled throughout the campaign to overcome the historically low poll numbers of a White House occupant and then against the economic downturn, claimed at least 141 electoral votes.

The popular vote appeared closer: Obama led by just a four-point margin — about 3 million voters out of 105 million — late in the evening. That still appeared to give him the highest percentage of votes for a Democratic nominee since 1964.

Obama, the self-described skinny kid with the funny name, overcame stunning odds to win an epic, transformational election that stretched 931 days, 109 primaries and caucuses and 47 debates not to mention an unprecedented $2 billion spent in the battle for the White House.

Obama’s success was in part attributable to a remarkably assured staff, a stunning $600 million fundraising run and an organizational effort never before seen in many states.

It began in Springfield, Ill., on a bitterly cold day in February 2007, when Obama — a rising Democratic star since his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — announced his candidacy.

“I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington,” Obama said that day. “But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

That theme — change — became the guiding political principle for Obama’s presidential effort, often contrasting with the “experience” argument of his opponents.

In a year of deep dissatisfaction with government and a downward spiraling economy, it was enough.

Voters concerned about the nation’s direction swept him to an upset victory on a cold January night in the Iowa caucuses, a state with an African-American population of less than 3 percent.

It boosted his campaign during a bitter, longer-than-expected primary battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, a fight that ended only last June when Obama narrowly claimed his party’s top prize.

And it remained a theme Tuesday night in Chicago where the senator from Illinois called for unity and a new direction.

From the start, crowds defined Obama’s candidacy almost as much as the soaring words he spoke. Republicans could never match it. About 9,000 came to Obama’s event in conservative-leaning Jacksonville, Fla., Monday while across the state in Tampa, McCain drew less than 1,000.

In Kansas City Tuesday night, some African-Americans wept over the historic nature of an African-American claiming the biggest prize in politics.

“It says that a lot of doors can be opened,” said Teresa Smith, a Kansas City Obama supporter. “For African-Americans, but it also gives hope to the younger generation who thought they might never see this day.”

The party of FDR and Truman will be tested in ways unseen since World War II. Obama seemed to recognize that Tuesday night.

“The road ahead will be long. The climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even in 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 said, echoing the words of Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago.

Republicans already are predicting a comeback in 2010.

“After two years of a liberal Democratic president and a liberal Democratic supermajority in the United States Congress, the American people will be ready for real change,” Missouri GOP executive director Jared Craighead said Tuesday

When the 2008 presidential race began in spring 2006, the nation’s chief concern was Iraq. That worry would eventually morph into $4-a-gallon gasoline prices and again to the state of the economy given the dramatic selloff on Wall Street and the historic financial bailout package Congress approved in October.

In 2006, consumer confidence had reached a four-year high, and Sarah Palin was embroiled in debates in the race for Alaska governor.

Joe Biden, in the meantime, was planning on running for president, but wasn’t officially in.

That year Obama spoke to 1,100 party faithful at Topeka’s Ramada Inn. Kansas Democrats hadn’t seen such big crowds since the early 1980s, when Ted Kennedy spoke in the state Capitol.

State Rep. Sue Storm, an Overland Park Democrat, could hardly believe what she was seeing.

“Look at this,” she said as she surveyed the hall.

That night, Obama spoke in the same broad strokes as he had when he spoke to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. America, he said that night, dreams big dreams, but is held back by the “timidity” of today’s politicians.

“There’s so much work to be done in America,” he said.

In January 2008 — Obama highlighted his Midwestern roots again, campaigning in El Dorado, Kan., with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius days before the Kansas Democratic caucus.

His maternal grandparents — Stanley and Madelyn Dunham (who died Monday) — grew up in central Kansas. After living and working there during the World War II, the couple moved to Hawaii, where Obama was born in 1961.

Tuesday, he said of his grandmother, “I know she’s watching.”

Source: kansascity.com