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WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) swept to victory as the nation’s first black president last night in an Electoral College landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. “Change has come,” he told a jubilant hometown Chicago crowd estimated at nearly a quarter-million people.
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 Sen. John McCain (R-Ill.) in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Iowa and more. He captured Virginia, too, the first candidate of his party in 44 years to do so.