The campaign is finally over. In what has turned out to be an historical election, voters in the USA have chosen Sen Barack Obama by a wide margin to become the nation’s 44th president. It is the first time in history that an African-American has been elected to serve that country’s highest political office.

In Chicago, hundreds of thousands of supporters young and old gathered in Grant Park to hear Obama deliver his victory speech on the same grounds as the tumultuous and violent events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention only four decades ago. Obama’s speech, which some commentators have compared to the language of former President Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) and with the cadence of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, moved most of the audience and many of those glued to television screens across the country to tears.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr, son of civil rights leader and the former presidential candidate of the same name, called Obama’s sweeping victory a “peaceful revolution”.

www.barackobama.com

Across the USA, Obama supporters took to the streets in celebration. An impromptu crowd amassed in front of the White House in the nation’s capital. Obama’s successful bid to occupy that famous residency has been one of the most dynamic and unpredictable political events in the nation’s modern history.

Voters also gave Democrats solid control of both congressional chambers, electing 254 Democrats to the House of Representatives out of a total 435 seats, and 56 of 100 total Senate seats (just shy of the 60 seats needed to block Republican filibusters). Majority control of Congress and a voter-backed margin favouring Obama over McCain 52% to 46% give Obama a clear mandate to enact reform proposals and embark on a direction entirely different than that of the previous 8 years under George W Bush.

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America”, Obama said on Tuesday night to a crowd that included celebrities, fellow politicians, and average Americans, some who had waited all day to hear the speech.

But despite the expanded congressional majorities and a voter-backed mandate for change, on Jan 20, 2009, Obama’s task will change from campaigning to governing as he inherits a country in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

As The Lancet’s Bryant Furlow reports, the US government’s recent financial bailout package adds nearly US$1 trillion dollars to an already existing $500 billion budget deficit. Add to that two ongoing foreign wars and an economy that remains stagnant, and many campaign promises, including health-care reform, may be out of reach for some time to come. Obama has acknowledged that health-care reform could be postponed.

“The economy, of course transcends all the other issues”, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel the day after Obama’s election.

But legislators do seem poised to at least partially take up the matter almost instantly by passing a measure that was impossible just last month under the Bush administration.

“As far as Congress is concerned, there are some things that we can do quickly to signal change”, Pelosi said. “We can come right back in January with a children’s health initiative. President Bush vetoed it, (but) it will probably be one of the first bills we would put on President Obama’s desk”, she said.

The initiative is a $35 billion expansion of a programme to provide health insurance to children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to afford insurance on their own. The bill would extend coverage to an estimated 10 million children, up from 6 million, and would dramatically reduce the number of uninsured children in the USA, supporters say. The vetoed bill had garnered support even from some congressional Republicans.

But other efforts to extend coverage to the millions of Americans without health insurance, to reduce costly premiums and guarantee access, as well as improve medical technology and preventive care-all initiatives promoted by Obama’s campaign-will prove costly and perhaps out of short-term reach given current budget restrictions.

Meanwhile, Obama began meetings this week with transition planners to start the task of naming members of his administration, one that is likely to draw heavily from his campaign and former President Bill Clinton’s administration.

David Boddiger

Bookmark on delicious | Digg

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under US Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.