Wed, 05 Nov 2008 - 04:25 GMT
Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. "Change has come," he told a huge throng of cheering supporters.
The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states ? Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa and more.
On a night for Democrats to savor, they padded their majorities in the House and Senate, and come January will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.
In his first speech as president-elect, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. "The greatest of a lifetime," he said, two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."
