By Ronald Baygents, KUNA,
Washington : Barack Obama became the first African-American in U.S. history to capture the presidency on Tuesday night in a historic election that signaled the end of the era of Republican conservatism in U.S. politics.
The 47-year-old, first-term U.S. senator from Illinois prevailed by campaigning for 21 months on a promise of change and hope in the wake of an era of highly partisan, divisive politics marked by the slim margins of victory claimed by Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
John McCain, the 72-year-old political maverick who tried to defeat Obama by seeking the support of the Republican political base that backed Bush, while simultaneously distancing himself from the unpopular incumbent president, lost the election by a wide margin.
Obama was scheduled to claim victory in an address to thousands of supporters at a late-night gathering in Grant Park in the senator’s hometown of Chicago. The crowd cheered wildly when MSNBC projected Obama the winner by capturing the Western states of Washington, Oregon and the biggest prize of them all, California, the most populous U.S. state.
McCain, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam, was hampered in his election effort by his political ties to Bush, as well as his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whom a majority of Americans decided was unprepared to assume the office of vice president or president, should McCain pass away while president.
Obama was able to bring along a significant new Democratic majority in both the U.S. Senate and House, prevailing in an election year when Americans made the spiraling U.S. economy their number one issue, eclipsing the once dominant issue of the Iraq war.
Analysts said Americans would have high expectations of Obama and the new Congress — since polls showed the current Congress even more unpopular than Bush, whose approval ratings set record lows in the last two years of his eight-year presidency.
Obama won on a pledge to restore the U.S. economy, end the Iraq war, wean America off its dependence on foreign oil for its energy, and provide Americans with revamped health care and education systems.
The new president, and his vice president-elect, Delaware Senator Joe Biden — the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — will take office next Jan. 20.