SENATOR BARACK OBAMA ELECTED 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 11.05.08
CHICAGO — Sen. Barack Obama shattered racial barriers and ushered in a new era of American politics on Tuesday by decisively defeating his Republican rival to become the 44th president of the United States of America.
Obama, the 47-year-old son of a Kansan mother and a Kenyan father, topped Sen. John McCain of Arizona to conclude the longest, most expensive campaign in the country’s history. The sentiment in Chicago’s Grant Park, where Obama declared victory, was clear: America had gotten its money’s worth.
To become the nation’s first black president-elect, the Illinois senator banded together a coalition augmented by minorities and young people who embraced his message of change and repudiated the past eight years of Republican rule under President George W. Bush ’68.
“This victory alone is not the change we seek,” Obama said in his acceptance speech here. “It is only the chance for us to make that change.”
