The election of Barack Obama
5 November 2008
Democratic candidate Barack Obama won an overwhelming victory over Republican John McCain in the US presidential election Tuesday, and the Democrats significantly increased their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the US Senate.
As of midnight, Obama was projected to win 338 electoral votes compared to 156 for McCain, with five states still too close to call. A total of 270 electoral votes is required for victory. The Democrats had gained at least five seats in the Senate and nearly 20 seats in the House, with the outcome of many contests still undetermined.
Obama carried 26 states: all 19 won by the 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry and seven states won by Bush in that election--Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. He was leading in three more states won by Bush in 2004--Indiana, North Carolina and Montana.
Obama's national margin in the popular vote will approach ten million. He has won by the largest margin for a non-incumbent candidate for president since Eisenhower in 1952.
First and foremost, the election outcome is a massive repudiation of the Bush presidency, the Republican Party and nearly three decades of right-wing domination of American politics. It is a watershed election, one which reflects, in the electoral framework, the massive demographic, socio-economic and cultural shifts over the past quarter-century.
All of the right-wing nostrums reiterated by the media and political establishment of both parties in recent years—that America is a "right" or "center-right" nation with a majority of "red states" unshakably loyal to the Republicans, that religion and cultural "values" are the decisive political issues—have been shattered.
More significantly, the election's outcome has disproved the claim that the United States is a racist nation, and that irrational racial animosities trump all other issues. According to exit polls, only a very small percentage of voters stated that the issue of race exerted any influence on their vote. Instead, under the impact of war, financial crisis and deepening recession, tens of millions, in a completely rational manner, voted to express their democratic and essentially egalitarian aspirations—although, given the distorted and limiting framework of official politics, the only outlet for their sentiments was a vote for the Democrats.
Polls also show that two-thirds of the immense youth vote went to Obama.
The result is shipwreck for the Republican Party, with its presidential base reduced to a regional rump, consisting of the Deep South and the largely rural states of the interior West. Obama swept the East Coast from Maine down to Florida, the industrial Midwest, the entire Pacific Coast and much of the Mountain West.
The Republicans lost Senate seats in every region of the country. Democrats captured vacant seats in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico and defeated incumbent Republicans in New Hampshire and North Carolina, with seats in Oregon, Alaska and Minnesota still undetermined. Not a single incumbent Democratic senator was defeated.
5 November 2008
Democratic candidate Barack Obama won an overwhelming victory over Republican John McCain in the US presidential election Tuesday, and the Democrats significantly increased their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the US Senate.
As of midnight, Obama was projected to win 338 electoral votes compared to 156 for McCain, with five states still too close to call. A total of 270 electoral votes is required for victory. The Democrats had gained at least five seats in the Senate and nearly 20 seats in the House, with the outcome of many contests still undetermined.
Obama carried 26 states: all 19 won by the 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry and seven states won by Bush in that election--Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. He was leading in three more states won by Bush in 2004--Indiana, North Carolina and Montana.
Obama's national margin in the popular vote will approach ten million. He has won by the largest margin for a non-incumbent candidate for president since Eisenhower in 1952.
First and foremost, the election outcome is a massive repudiation of the Bush presidency, the Republican Party and nearly three decades of right-wing domination of American politics. It is a watershed election, one which reflects, in the electoral framework, the massive demographic, socio-economic and cultural shifts over the past quarter-century.
All of the right-wing nostrums reiterated by the media and political establishment of both parties in recent years—that America is a "right" or "center-right" nation with a majority of "red states" unshakably loyal to the Republicans, that religion and cultural "values" are the decisive political issues—have been shattered.
More significantly, the election's outcome has disproved the claim that the United States is a racist nation, and that irrational racial animosities trump all other issues. According to exit polls, only a very small percentage of voters stated that the issue of race exerted any influence on their vote. Instead, under the impact of war, financial crisis and deepening recession, tens of millions, in a completely rational manner, voted to express their democratic and essentially egalitarian aspirations—although, given the distorted and limiting framework of official politics, the only outlet for their sentiments was a vote for the Democrats.
Polls also show that two-thirds of the immense youth vote went to Obama.
The result is shipwreck for the Republican Party, with its presidential base reduced to a regional rump, consisting of the Deep South and the largely rural states of the interior West. Obama swept the East Coast from Maine down to Florida, the industrial Midwest, the entire Pacific Coast and much of the Mountain West.
The Republicans lost Senate seats in every region of the country. Democrats captured vacant seats in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico and defeated incumbent Republicans in New Hampshire and North Carolina, with seats in Oregon, Alaska and Minnesota still undetermined. Not a single incumbent Democratic senator was defeated.
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