Barack Obama swept to an historic and decisive victory as the first black US president, but pleaded for time to heal and transform the superpower as he faced up Wednesday to the huge task of forging his promised change.
‘It’s been a long time coming, but tonight... at this defining moment, change has come to America,’ Obama told 240,000 euphoric supporters, many in tears, at a rally late Tuesday after defeating Republican John McCain.
Obama, 47, will be inaugurated as the 44th US president on January 20, and inherit an economy mired in financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a nuclear showdown with Iran.
‘Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime, two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century,’ said Obama.
‘The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep, we may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there,’ Obama said in his home town of Chicago.
‘I promise you — we as a people will get there.’
Senator Obama solidified traditional Democratic states and cut deep into the Republican territory which his rival needed to control to win the White House.
Obama’s win was greeted with euphoria across the United States and reverberated around the world.
New York’s Times Square exploded in joy at a moment of healing for America’s racial scars, and a screaming crowd gathered outside the White House. In Kenya, where Obama’s father was born, the president, Mwai Kibaki, declared a national holiday.
Celebrations erupted from the bars of London and Sydney, with parties spilling onto the streets from Berlin to Havana and from Paris to the small Japanese town of Obama.
Democrats also made huge strides in Congress, gaining an unshakeable grip on power in Washington. They boosted their majority in the Senate by five seats, with results still pending in four states, and by 20 seats in the lower House of Representatives.
After a bitter campaign, McCain was gracious in defeat, and noted that his election was a moment to cherish for African Americans.
Deeply unpopular president George W Bush, who has been in control through eight turbulent years, also congratulated Obama.
‘Mr President-elect, congratulations to you,’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino quoted the president as saying in a phone call to Obama.
‘What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters. Laura and I called to congratulate you and your good bride.’
Obama’s inauguration will complete a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of US and global politics from national obscurity just four years ago and close an eight-year era of deepening international and economic crises under Bush.
Obama is promising to renew bruised ties with US allies, and to engage some of the United States’ fiercest foes such as Iran and North Korea. He has vowed to tackle climate change and ensure health care access for all Americans. Some 45 million Americans have no health care whatsoever.
His presidency also marks a stunning social shift, with Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, the first African American president of a nation still riven by racial divides.
Forty-five years after civil rights icon Martin Luther King laid out his ‘dream’ of racial equality, Obama’s election broke new barriers and may have helped heal some of the moral wounds left by slavery and the US civil war.
When he launched his campaign on a chilly day in Illinois in February 2007, Obama forged a mantra of change which powered him through the longest, most costly US presidential campaign in history.
His success looked likely after he captured Pennsylvania, the battleground state which was McCain’s best hope of winning a Democratic state and keeping his rival from the White House.
And in a sweet moment for Democrats, Obama also seized the key midwestern states of Ohio, Iowa and Indiana as well as the southwestern state of New Mexico, all states won by Bush in 2004.
He later added Ohio, the decisive state which swept Bush to victory in 2004 and another Republican state, Virginia, which had not voted Democrat since 1964. He also won Florida, ground zero of the 2000 recount debacle.
McCain had argued Obama was too inexperienced to be US commander-in-chief and would pursue ‘socialist’ redistribution policies that would leave the economy mired in recession.
As of early Wednesday he had won 28 states, including the district of Columbia, for 349 electoral votes.
McCain had won 20 states but had not broken out of the Republican heartland and the south for 159 electoral votes.
Results were still pending in the states of North Carolina and Missouri, according to television networks.
In the Senate, Democrats wrested control of five Republican seats including in the traditionally Republican state of Virginia, followed by New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Mexico, reaching a 56 seat majority in the 100-seat chamber.
Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell clung on in Kentucky, meaning Democrats were unlikely to win the 60 seats they need in the 100-seat chamber needed to frustrate Republican obstruction tactics.
Senate races in Alaska, Minnesota, Georgia and Oregon however were still too close to call.
Democrats also won 20 seats in the House of Representatives, solidifying their majority to 258 against 177 of the Republicans, according to data from NBC news.
No comments:
Post a Comment