Obama Wins; America Elects Its First Black President

He won praise for his selection of Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. , the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as his running mate, a choice that contrasted starkly with McCain’s pick of then-little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin , who had no experience in national or international affairs.

Palin, who energized conservative voters, would have been the first woman to win the vice presidency.

Obama’s election caps a rocket-like political ascent that took him from state senator to U.S. senator to president-elect in the span of four years. It comes 138 years after African Americans won the right to vote by adoption of the 15th amendment to the Constitution and 43 years after the Voting Rights Act ensured that the federal government would back that right

“Tonight the vision of the founding fathers, the Constitution and ‘a more perfect union,’ have intersected with the hopes and aspirations of the descendents of the slaves -- on this night they became one,” said Illinois Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. , a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign.

“The American people have entrusted to Barack Obama the future of our nation,” Jackson said. “America showed the world a peaceful revolution, the power of redemption. Because of their faith the American people will now have a government as good as the American people.”

Obama won Rust Belt states where some analysts had once predicted he would have trouble persuading working-class white voters that he would best represent their interests and at least one state, Virginia, that had not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964.

“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 told the crowd just after midnight on the East Coast.

To lay claim to the Oval Office, the relative newcomer out-dueled Clinton, who is New York’s junior senator, in a long and contentious primary and beat McCain, a 26-year Capitol Hill veteran whose lifelong service to his country included more than five years of captivity as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

He also deftly moved past a few potential pitfalls of his own making, including his relationships with convicted Chicago influence-peddler Tony Rezko, the controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, who has said that the United States government created HIV to kill black people, and Bill Ayers, the leader of the violent 1960s and 1970s Weather Underground organization that bombed the Pentagon.

Obama’s equanimity proved to be one of the hallmarks of a campaign that developed a reputation for uncommon discipline and calm.

The candidate demonstrated a unique combination of political skills by connecting with massive audiences through a rhetorical style that weaved together soaring calls for hope, change and action with the rousing cadences of a preacher, by inspiring volunteers to sign up by the thousands, by devoting resources to teaching those volunteers to do their own organizing, and by raising record-shattering sums of money for his campaign.

Well aware of his fundraising potential, Obama became the first modern candidate to reject public funding for a general election and ended up raising a total of $639.2 million for the primary and general elections through mid-October -- a treasury that enabled him to spend several times McCain’s output in battleground states during the campaign’s stretch run.

But it was Obama’s willingness to invest time, energy and money in grassroots organizing that was critical to developing the most sophisticated political operation in American history, according to Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who helped design and implement the organizing program used at “Camp Obama” training sessions across the country.

Obama Wins; America Elects Its First Black President

“They built this broad financial base and then they were able to do all the media stuff and invest in the organization-building that was required to make the whole thing happen,” Ganz said. “It’s not that expensive but it’s the thing that always gets cut.”

Ganz says Obama used a narrative form to articulate common values, created a relationship with supporters by talking about what they could do together rather than what he would do for them, and committed to teaching organizing skills that could be used to grow the campaign.

“There’s a kind of a resonance that emerged between Obama, the articulator of a call, and the way in which the organization developed on the ground that I think reinforced one another and then becomes very powerful.”

A graduate of Harvard law school who worked as a community organizer in Chicago before serving eight years in the state Senate, Obama first appeared on the national political scene at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston as a Senate candidate.

It was there, as he delivered the keynote address in support of that year’s Democratic nominee, John Kerry , that Obama began to win Democratic, independent and some Republican hearts and minds with a speech entitled “The Audacity of Hope” in which he appealed for national unity by observing that “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America ... we worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.”

The speech made Obama an instant star in the Democratic Party and marked him as a potential presidential candidate, though close associates say he did not begin to seriously consider running until after the 2006 mid-term congressional election.

Nearly two years after embarking on an exhausting quest for the presidency, Obama told the nation and the throng in Grant Park that he was just beginning:

“This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.”