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Obama sweeps to victory as first black president

BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON | nia.henderson@newsday.com

November 5, 2008

Barack Obama, riding a wave of economic discontent and with the wind of history at his back, was elected the nation's first black president last night in a sweeping victory that stretched from the deep South to the frontier West, ending eight years of Republican rule and beginning a new era in America's complex racial history.

In record numbers, a broad swath of voters - men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos, young folks and retirees - stood in line, some undeterred by long waits, giving the first-term Democratic senator from Illinois the popular and electoral vote and a near-filibuster-proof majority in Congress.

His defeat of John McCain was a resounding rebuke of the Republican Party, which sustained losses at every level.

"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 at Chicago's Grant Park.

"It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day," Obama said.

Historically, Obama's victory marked a racial milestone, nearly unthinkable just a few decades ago, a bookend to the civil rights struggles that have defined much of America's history.

"All of the work we did wasn't in vain," said Mary Portis, 60, of Freeport, the clerk of Mount Sinai Baptist Church Cathedral in Roosevelt. "I can't even put it into words. It's been a long time coming."

In his gracious concession speech, McCain evoked Booker T. Washington's historic White House visit with Theodore Roosevelt, acknowledging that the nation is a far different place now.

"Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on earth," he said to a disappointed crowd in Phoenix. "This was a long and hard-fought campaign, but the result was well worth the wait. Together, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and a Democratic Congress, we will chart a better course to build a new economy and rebuild our leadership in the world."

Obama, who has been a national figure for only four years, captured two states below the Mason-Dixon Line, devising a Southern strategy of his own by turning out the black and youth vote, in both rural and urban areas, to upend the red-blue state divide. He won in the big battleground states.

Eight years ago, Obama was an unknown Illinois state senator. Then, in the summer of 2004, he took the stage at his party's convention in Boston, announcing himself in soaring language as the son of a Kenyan goat herder and a free-spirited white Kansan whose unlikely story was uniquely American.

Obama treated the often personality-based political squabblings the same way he dealt with race - he stayed mostly above the fray, deflecting culture-war-style attacks as beside the point. Ultimately, exit polls showed that race did not matter.

In the end, it came down to the tattered economy, with a $700-billion bank bailout and a roller-coaster stock market serving as the "October surprise." Obama, with his steady approach, gained an edge that an off-message McCain, 72, could not overtake.

McCain's character-based campaign, which first likened Obama to a celebrity and in the last weeks sought to link him to an 1960s-era anti-war radical, never gained traction and in fact seemed to turn voters off. And McCain, a moderate who often bucked his party, could not shake his ties to the deeply unpopular Bush.

Though he was able to shore up the conservative base with Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, the race was largely fought in swing states over swing voters, with minority and young voters playing a key role.

Edwin "Buzz" Schwenk, former head of the Suffolk County GOP and a McCain supporter, called Obama's victory one of the most important moments in U.S. history. He compared his ascendancy to the White House to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

"I think it is a phenomenal historic event that is on par with anything that has happened in the great United States of America," he said.

At 47, Obama is the fourth youngest president ever elected. He will be sworn in next year with his wife, Michelle, a Harvard-trained lawyer, at his side and his two young daughters, Sasha and Malia. Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother who raised him in Hawaii, died at 86, just two days before the election.

To win, Obama turned back to his days as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side, relying on a viral and Internet-heavy grassroots campaign. He carved out a broad base and he successfully cast himself as a man of his time, a biracial bridge-builder, not tied to the divisive politics of the past.

"The road ahead will be long," Obama said last night.