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America turned a page this week.
Barack Obama broke through the racial barrier to the Oval Office, becoming the first black person to gain the presidency. And his electoral landslide delivered a powerful message about a new generation of American leadership.
The young and minority voters who helped lift the 47-year-old Democrat to the White House are now the foundation of a new majority in U.S. politics. Their emergence likely brings to a close the era of conservative dominance that began with Ronald Reagan's election almost three decades ago.
“It's a major milestone,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., a leading Obama supporter. “So often the African American people have felt as if they were invisible. … The impact of this will be felt for a very, very, very long time.”
Through a democratic vote, the citizens of the globe's superpower demonstrated that America remains an open society. They handed authority to the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother whose middle name, Hussein, is as common in Arab countries as it is rare in the United States.
Widespread dissatisfaction with a badly slumping economy hurt Republican John McCain's chances, as Obama blew past the share of the popular vote won by the last Democrat to get a popular majority, Jimmy Carter, with 50.1 percent in 1976.
Obama's campaign invested heavily in new voter registration, particularly among minorities and those younger than 30, and he saw that strategy pay off handsomely. About 1 in 7 of Obama's votes came from people taking part in an election for the first time.
Overall, about 1 in 5 new voters was black, double the proportion in the overall electorate, and 1 in 5 was Hispanic.
The breadth of the liberal Democrat's victory – based on his brief record in elective politics, he could well become the most liberal president since Lyndon Johnson – will likely strengthen his hand once he takes office.
Less clear, however, given the country's highly uncertain economic future, is the precise direction he intends to take. Obama ran a non-ideological campaign and is expected to give prominent Cabinet seats to Republicans, in an effort to cast himself as a centrist president who will reach across party lines.
The overriding message of change that he delivered over the past 21 months has included a call for ending Washington's petty politics and the excessive influence of special interests.
But a bulked-up Democratic majority in Congress, one of the byproducts of the Obama win, will likely embolden members of the new president's party to make up for legislative setbacks under President Bush. That could put unwanted pressure on Obama and make it harder for him to govern from the center.
He will undoubtedly claim a mandate in his sweeping win, which owed much to a revolutionary campaign apparatus that reinvented politics by marrying the Internet and modern communications technology in spectacular fashion.
His remarkable success in raising far more money than most strategists thought possible enabled him to dethrone his party's reigning family, the Clintons, and gave him powerful leverage in the general election.
Obama also owed his triumph, in considerable measure, to millions of volunteers, many of them young, who mobilized on his behalf and formed the nucleus of a new political machine now positioned to expand its influence in coming months.
The president-elect set the tone in his victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park on Tuesday night, portraying America as a land of possibility and promise:
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
