This past Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 11 p.m. EST, the land slid tectonically; a centuries-old structure of exclusion crumbled; and the global political landscape changed forever: Barack Obama was decisively elected President of the United States.

People around the world celebrated in caves, shanties, apartment buildings and castles alike. They hugged in cobblestone streets, they cheered in pubs, they cried together in crowds of people whom they didn’t know personally but with whom they shared the most personal of feelings: the once-elusive feeling of hope.

They looked on in admiration as Americans elected the first world leader.

We live in a world where bad mortgage lending practices in the United States can cause an 11 percent one-day drop on Japan’s stock exchange.

Mere hours after Barack Obama’s victory, Cornell professors analyzed the policies and plans of the president-elect, converging in yesterday’s conference “Now that they’ve won, what will they do?” in Goldwin Smith.

Sponsored by the Cornell in Washington program and moderated by Cornell in Washington director Prof. Robert Hutchens, industrial and labor relations, the conference was the brainchild of Prof. Theodore Lowi, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions and a longtime collaborator of the Cornell in Washington program. Forward thinking: Prof. Richard Booth, city and regional planning, and Prof. Theodore Lowi, government, speak about Obama’s presidency yesterday in Goldwin Smith.

The soon to be former president, reduced to a punch line, an abstraction McCain ducked and Obama abused, slithers back to Crawford in tatters this January. Lost in the dust storm of Obama and his many millions of supporters stampeding toward Washington to reclaim a country they once loved is the departure of the bumbling Texan, our president, George W. Bush.

Finally, the end. Away with the destroyer of freedom and humility and the virtuous America. Be gone, creator of chaos and starvation and shame. The day is here at long last. The king is dead! Rejoice!

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.

Democrats were victorious in both houses of Congress last night, securing seats that would back president-elect Barack Obama upon his inauguration. Marking a major shift in power in New York, the Democratic Party will hold 26 of the 29 seats in the House of Representatives, in addition to at least 32 of 62 seats in the State Senate.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) was elected to serve his ninth term in the 22nd district, which includes Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions. He defeated Republican George Phillips, a history teacher in Binghamton. In an informal lunch meeting at Cornell last month, Hinchey — one of 288 to reject the $700 billion bailout bill in September — addressed the current financial crisis.

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease in a landslide victory. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Obamania erupted in Collegetown just after 11 p.m. as Barack Obama was declared the next president of the United States. People poured out of bars and crowded the streets as they soaked in the historic moment.

“It’s crazy, oh my God,” Leslie Tseng ’10 said. “Everyone is running up and down Dryden Road, yelling ‘Barack Obama’ and setting off fireworks.”

It was a time of unbridled celebration across campus.

“After McCain conceded, everyone was on cell phones, smiling and screaming. Everyone was really happy and the atmosphere was great,” Claudia Mattos ’11 said.Obamania