Obama wins
Posted: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 10:10 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The New York Times front page: "OBAMA." Subheadline: "Racial barrier falls in decisive victory."
The NY Times' Nagourney: "The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis -- a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago."
The Washington Post: "Obama makes history." "Obama, 47, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, led a tide of Democratic victories across the nation in defeating Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a 26-year veteran of Washington who could not overcome his connections to President Bush's increasingly unpopular administration."
The Washington Post's Balz lead: "After a victory of historic significance, Barack Obama will inherit problems of historic proportions. Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated at the depths of the Great Depression in 1933 has a new president been confronted with the challenges Obama will face as he starts his presidency."
"His general-election campaign had gone stale. For weeks, he had watched Sen. John McCain suction up the oxygen in the race, driving the news coverage after the boisterous Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., and suddenly drawing huge crowds with his new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin," the Washington's Post's Kornblut writes. "Convening the meeting that Sunday in the office of David Axelrod, his chief strategist, Obama was blunt: It was time to get serious.
"'He said, 'You know, maybe we can just win it on the issues. But I don't think so,' recalled senior adviser Anita Dunn. With the debates approaching and just seven weeks until the election, "his charge to everybody was 'Guys, we're back in combat mode,'" Dunn said. And then, the next morning, a global earthquake hit: Lehman Brothers, the giant investment firm, filed for bankruptcy, triggering the biggest corporate collapse in U.S. history and an international financial meltdown, and transforming the presidential race."
"Historic victory" is the six-column banner headline of the Boston Globe.
The LA Times Barabak: "In winning the White House, Obama modified the electorate:About 1 in 10 of those casting ballots Tuesday were doing so for the first time. Though that number was about the same as four years ago, most of the newcomers were younger than 30, about a fifth were black, and a fifth were Latino. That was greater than their share of the overall population, and those groups voted overwhelmingly for Obama."
"Race proved to be no discernible handicap, even among the small-town, working-class whites who were considered most resistant to the black political newcomer from Chicago," writes the LA Times. More: "Obama improved on past Democratic performances among all groups, with the singular exception of seniors. He improved on 2004 nominee John F. Kerry's totals among Jews, Protestants and Catholics. While Kerry split women's votes with Bush, Obama won a decisive majority. Moreover, Obama won the votes of 4 in 10 white men -- higher than the last five Democratic presidential nominees, according to a National Journal study of exit polls -- and nearly half of white independents."
The NY Daily News: "Change has come" is the cover headline below a smiling Obama.
The NY Post: "Obama wins." "Barack Obama scored a barrier-breaking victory tonight to become the first black president of the United States -- capping a 22-month quest that tapped into a national hunger for 'hope' and 'change.'"
The http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/11/05/historic_victory/lead: "Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected the 44th president of the United States and the nation's first black commander in chief yesterday, his triumph ushering in an era of profound political and social realignment in America."
"This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts," writes the New York Times' editorial board. "An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States. ... Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise. That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party."
"And yet Obama's clear-cut victory, bolstered by strong majorities of his own party in both houses of Congress, can be read as a mandate for some very specific policy changes that could, by themselves, have momentous impact. Withdrawal from Iraq. Renewal of the six-decade quest for national health insurance. The launch of a major government-funded quest for renewable energy," the Boston Globe writes. "Beyond the policies, Obama's election will stand forever amid the great milestones of America's racial history, the end of a torturous progression from emancipation to the civil rights movement to the election of the first black president. And yet the biggest change of all - the one that the hundreds of thousands of supporters who came to Grant Park are expecting -- will be intangible: The change of tone in the country."
"Millions of black voters across the country turned out to help elect Barack Obama the first African-American president yesterday, and as they did, they reflected not just on the course of a historic campaign, but on the history of a nation. From Florida to Arizona, Chicago to Boston, black Americans said they were writing a new chapter in a progression that began long before Obama burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. The moment was tinged with poignancy at the prices paid by generations before them who could have never imagined a black man winning the highest office in the land."
AP: "Throngs packed plazas and pubs around the world to await US elections results last night and today, many inspired by Barack Obama's promise of change amid a sense of relief that the White House is changing hands."
"His name etched in history as America's first black president, Barack Obama turned from the jubilation of victory to the sobering challenge of leading a nation worried about economic crisis, two unfinished wars and global uncertainty," AP writes.
AP's Walter Mears: "Audacity won. Now Barack Obama must validate the hope and deliver the change he promised. He's already changed America by becoming the first black man to win the White House. His challenge is to change the course of its government and guide it through hard times and past the financial crisis he inherits as he takes office."
"No president since before Barack Obama was born has ascended to the Oval Office confronted by the accumulation of seismic challenges awaiting him. Historians grasping for parallels point to Abraham Lincoln taking office as the nation was collapsing into Civil War, or Franklin D. Roosevelt arriving in Washington in the throes of the Great Depression," The NY Times' Baker writes. "What kind of decision maker and leader Mr. Obama will be remains unclear even to many of his supporters. Will he be willing to use his political capital and act boldly, or will he move cautiously and risk being paralyzed by competing demands from within his own party? His performance under the harsh lights of the campaign trail suggests a figure with remarkable coolness and confidence under enormous pressure, yet also one who rarely veers off the methodical path he lays out."
And don't miss: "Mr. Obama may also have a news conference and announce top White House appointees by the end of the week, advisers said."
The NYT's Healy offers this warning: "The last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, claimed that they had reshaped electoral politics by recapturing battlegrounds like Georgia, Missouri and Ohio with promises of governing from the center. Both came up short rather quickly: Mr. Carter’s declaration of a post-Watergate realignment ended with one term and the loss of the Senate in 1980, while Mr. Clinton’s party lost Congress after two years and watched Republicans reclaim the White House in 2000.
"Mr. Obama will soon face an American people seeking to have hopes met and change confirmed as he addresses an array of problems no incoming president has faced since Franklin D. Roosevelt. And Democrats will expect, in short order, a plan for withdrawing one to two brigades a month from Iraq, a major economic stimulus package, and a repeal of President Bush’s tax cuts."
