President Barack Obama: Black America Stands Tall

FoxNews & Rupert Murdoch, Meet President Barack Hussein Obama

As I indicated months earlier, Barack Obama would not only win the presidency but would win by a landslide. He has done so and he did it with the grace of a statesman. America is happy, the world is happy and now it is time for all of us to go to work and make things better. To repair the damage that the Bush/Cheney Administration committed and the wars they have spawned or played a part in escalating.

Rupert Murdoch has made it clear in the past that he did not want Barack Obama to become president. Well, Mr. Murdoch, it is now President Obama and Wall Street and those who are thieves will no longer steal from the people and then ask the people to bail them out.

106-year-old Atlanta woman basks in Obama tribute

ATLANTA – At age 106, Ann Nixon Cooper doesn't usually stay awake past midnight. But on Election Night she had special reason to do so: She was waiting for Barack Obama to mention her name. Cooper, one of the oldest voters for the nation's first black president, had been tipped off by the Obama campaign that she would be mentioned in his acceptance speech. Toward the end, she got her moment.

"I was waiting for it," said Cooper. "I had heard that they would be calling my name at least."

Obama introduced the world to a woman who "was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin."

"Tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can," he said.

On Wednesday, Cooper beamed as she greeted reporters at her southwest Atlanta home, wearing a gold cross around her neck that proudly displayed her age.

Cooper first registered to vote on Sept. 1, 1941. Though she was friends with elite black Atlantans like W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin and Benjamin E. Mays, because of her status as a black woman in a segregated and sexist society, she didn't exercise her right to vote for years.

Instead, she deferred to her husband — Dr. Albert B. Cooper, a prominent Atlanta dentist — who "voted for the house."

Her husband died in 1967. Cooper has outlived three of her four children and lived to see women gain the right to vote and the end of segregation. On Oct. 16, she voted early for the Illinois senator, who called to thank her after reading a news article about her.

Cooper said she believes Obama's win could finally signal the change she has been waiting for.

"I feel nothing but relief that things have changed as much as they have," she said. "After a while, we will all be one. That's what I look forward to."

Cooper turns 107 in January, just a few weeks before Obama's inauguration.

Obama picks Clinton alum Emanuel chief of WH staff

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama pivoted quickly to begin filling out his new administration on Wednesday, selecting hard-charging Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff while aides stepped up the pace of transition work that had been cloaked in pre-election secrecy.

Several Democrats confirmed that Emanuel had been offered the job. While it was not clear he had accepted, a rejection would amount to an unlikely public snub of the new president-elect within hours of an electoral college landslide.

With hundreds of jobs to fill and only 10 weeks until Inauguration Day, Obama and his transition team confronted a formidable task complicated by his anti-lobbyist campaign rhetoric.

The official campaign Web Site said no political appointees would be permitted to work on "regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."

But almost exactly one year ago, on Nov. 3, 2007, candidate Obama went considerably further than that while campaigning in South Carolina. "I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House," he said of lobbyists at the time.

Because they often have prior experience in government or politics, lobbyists figure as potential appointees for presidents of both parties.

On the morning after making history, the man elected the first black president had breakfast with his wife and two daughters at their Chicago home, went to a nearby gym and visited his downtown offices.

Aides said he planned no public appearances until later in the week, when he has promised to hold a news conference.

As president-elect, he begins receiving highly classified briefings from top intelligence officials Thursday.

In offering the post of White House chief of staff to Emanuel, Obama turned to a fellow Chicago politician with a far different style from his own, a man known for his bluntness as well as his single-minded determination.

Emanuel was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton's White House. Leaving that, he turned to investment banking, then won a Chicago-area House seat six years ago. In Congress, he moved quickly into the leadership. As chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, he played an instrumental role in restoring his party to power after 12 years in the minority.

Emanuel maintained neutrality during the long primary battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, not surprising given his long-standing ties to the former first lady and his Illinois connections with Obama.

The day after the election there already was jockeying for Cabinet appointments.

Several Democrats said Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who won a new six-year term on Tuesday, was angling for secretary of state. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss any private conversations.

Kerry's spokeswoman, Brigid O'Rourke, disputed the reports. "It's not true. It's ridiculous," she said in an interview.

Announcement of the transition team came in a written statement from the Obama camp.

The group is headed by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff under former President Clinton; Pete Rouse, who has been Obama's chief of staff in the Senate, and Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the president-elect and campaign adviser.

Several Democrats described a sprawling operation well under way. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday's election.

They said the group was stocked with longtime associates of Obama, as well as veterans of Clinton's White House.

Quite apart from transition issues, Obama's status as an incumbent member of Congress presents issues unseen since 1960, when John F. Kennedy moved from the Senate to the White House.

The Senate is scheduled to hold a postelection session in two weeks, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference Wednesday to reinforce her call for quick action on a bill to stimulate the economy.

That places Obama in uncharted territory — a president-elect, presumably first among equals among congressional Democrats. Yet his and their ability to enact legislation depends almost entirely until Inauguration Day on President Bush's willingness to sign it.

Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was elected to a new six-year term from Delaware on Tuesday and he must resign before he can be sworn in as vice president. Democrats are certain to hold his seat, following Jack Markell's election as governor.

There has been intense speculation that Biden's son, Beau Biden, is interested in ascending to the seat. But he is serving a one-year stint in Iraq as a member of the National Guard. In the interim, outgoing Gov. Ruth Ann Minner is seen among many Democrats as a likely appointee to hold the office until an election in 2010.

Obama also must resign his Senate seat before he can be sworn in as the 44th president. Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will pick a replacement.

____

Nedra Pickler reported from Chicago. AP writers Liz Sidoti and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed from Washington and Glen Johnson from Boston.

Kenya maternities greet Obama and Michelle

KISUMU, Kenya (AFP) – Little Obamas and Michelles were coming to the world in maternities all over Kenya -- one woman managing both at the same time with a pair of twins -- as the party mood continued Wednesday in the nation where the US president-elect's father was born.

In the New Nyanza provincial general hospital in Kisumu, the capital of the region which is home to Barack Obama's ancestral village, Pauline Adhiambo gave birth to twins she named Obama and Michelle, an AFP correspondent reported.

At least eight other boys were named Barack or Obama -- or both -- in this hospital alone while maternities in the capital Nairobi and across the entire country reported new namesakes for the future occupants of the White House.

"I consulted my husband and we agreed the name Barack Obama would be ideal for our baby boy because the whole town and the entire world was very enthusiastic about Barack Obama, and we believe he is a great man," Josephine Anyango Anyango told AFP.

President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago

Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4th, 2008 in Chicago.

Why Obama won

Barack Obama’s sweeping victory as president of the United States sends him to the White House to face what may be the worst national financial crisis since the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932.

Obama won on his own terms, strategically and symbolically. He rolled up a series of contested states, from Colorado to Virginia, long out of Democratic reach. And his victory reflected the accuracy of his vision of a reshaped country. Racism, much discussed, turned out to be a footnote, and African-American turnout was not unusually high. Instead, Obama drew his strength from an array of racially mixed, growing areas around cities like Orlando, Washington, Indianapolis, and Columbus on his way to at least 334 electoral votes.

“Even as we celebrate tonight we know that the challenges tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime: two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century,” Obama told a crowd of more than 100,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park.

The assembled crowd had been strangely silent through the evening, even as Obama shut the door for McCain by winning New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and even after his victory in Ohio pointed toward a landslide, seemingly unwilling to accept or believe the impending victory.

Only at 11:00 p.m., when CNN declared that Obama had surpassed 270 electoral votes, did the crowd roar in approval.

"This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance to make that change," Obama said, standing between two bulletproof glass walls.

McCain, speaking in a somber concession speech outside the Phoenix hotel where he married his wife, declared that he had done what he could.

"I don't know what more we could have done to try to win this election," he said.

Calling Obama "my president," McCain vowed to work with him to help repair a nation facing profound challenges at home and abroad.

"These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face," McCain said.

After booing Obama's name and offering a few jeers, the crowd came to recognize the history in the evening when McCain paid tribute to the nation's first black president by recalling his own favorite commander-in-chief.

"A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters," McCain recalled. "America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States."

For the first time, claps and even a few cheers were heard from the dejected crowd.

Obama’s win came with Democratic gains in the Senate and House, though his broad victory — he swept swing states ranging from Indiana to Ohio to Virginia — was perhaps even more dramatic than his party’s success in congressional races. Obama and other Democratic leaders quickly signaled their awareness of the risk of overreaching, with Obama avoiding any claim of partisan victory, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid going further.

"This is a mandate to get along, to get something done in a bipartisan way. This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology,” Reid told Politico.

As grand as the symbolism of Obama’s victory was, it was also a victory for his steady, corporate campaign management. The campaign’s early decision to play on a more ambitious map than other Democratic nominees was the source of his mandate. And the result closely mirrored the PowerPoint presentation his campaign manager, David Plouffe, pitched to sometimes-skeptical audiences of reporters and donors.



McCain’s campaign blamed larger forces for their candidate’s defeat.

“We were crushed by circumstance,” communications director Jill Hazelbaker said after McCain’s speech. “The economic crisis was a pivotal point in this race.”

External factors aside, McCain and his campaign also lagged far behind Obama in every key metric — money, organization, discipline — and failed to embrace Obama's organizational model or the technology it borrowed from the private sector.

Earlier campaigns had celebrated their technological prowess, but in Obama’s cutting-edge campaign, new political technology was implemented and came of age, evidenced by its vaunted fundraising machine and its “Houdini” computer system, which enabled the campaign as late as Tuesday afternoon to identify and bring to the polls a last wave of supporters who hadn’t yet voted.

The coalition Obama assembled proved as modern as the technology his campaign employed.

In his clear-cut victory, Obama became the first Democrat to win a majority of American votes since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election. He won states just months ago thought to be impregnable to his party, places that just four years ago went for President Bush by double-digits: Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina among them.

Indeed, Obama won in all regions of the country but the Deep South, piling up big wins in the perennial Democratic bulwarks on both coasts and making deep inroads into New South states, the industrial and agricultural heartland and the fast-growing Rocky Mountain West.

But perhaps most spectacularly, he found victory with a multiracial coalition that has the makings of a formidable political base of power.

If his was the first 21st century campaign, his victory was powered by a new face of America: comprised of all ethnicities, hailing mostly from cities and suburbs, largely under 40 years old, and among all income classes.

As they emphatically proved by obliterating the presidential color line, many of these voters are not guided by traditional cultural attachment to race, religion or region.

What makes his victory so resounding, and so daunting for Republicans, was that he combined support from African-Americans, Jews, and young whites with other key groups. He also reversed President Bush’s advances with Hispanic voters.

Further, and even more worrisome for the GOP, Obama was dominant among self-described “moderate” voters, a 60 percent swath of Americans larger than either self-described liberals or conservatives.

This 21st century coalition allowed Obama to blow out McCain in cities and suburbs where Bush had narrowly won or lost by smaller margins four years ago, and to pull off narrow wins in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana and Ohio.

He ran up huge margins in heavily-black cities and counties in each, but was able to edge out McCain thanks to big wins in populous, racially-mixed localities like Northern Virginia's Fairfax County (59 percent), Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County (62 percent), Orlando’s Orange County (59 percent), Indianapolis’s Marion County (64 percent) and Columbus’s Franklin County (59 percent).

The coalition underscored the theme that made Obama famous in 2004, and one that he returned to in his victory speech, citing his support from “young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."