By Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman, WSJ 5 November 2008
Key battleground wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida put Sen. Barack Obama over the top in a hard-fought presidential race, defeating rival Sen. John McCain.
Sen. McCain’s loss in the Buckeye State followed losses in New Mexico and New Hampshire, swing states he was hoping to secure for the Republican column.
With the victory, Sen. Obama becomes the nation’s 44th president, riding a tide of voter discontent with the economy, the war in Iraq and eight years of Republican White House rule. A victory after an epic two-year campaign would alter the racial dynamics of a country that has long struggled with questions of colour.
It would also usher in a period of dominance for Democrats in Washington for the first time since the early years of Bill Clinton’s first term. In early returns, Democrats had already captured several Republican-held Senate seats in New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia. Democrats were also gunning to increase their margins in the House.
Fierce Headwinds
Sen. McCain made a major push for Ohio, spending two days there last week in hopes of winning the 20 electoral votes of a state that nearly always sides with the winner.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Sen. McCain also targeted Pennsylvania, a state won by Democrats in the past four elections. He hoped an upset win there would offset any losses he might suffer elsewhere, but a teetering economy and a desire for change in the Keystone State put it out of reach.
If the final results turn out as projected, Sen. Obama’s party will control both houses of Congress as well as the White House, setting the scene for Democrats to push an ambitious agenda from health care to financial regulation. These plans will face fierce headwinds from the sour economy and giant budget deficits.
Sen. Obama’s campaign was built on record fund-raising and a vast national campaign network. He would enter office with a long policy wish list that includes ending the war in Iraq, implementing a near-universal health-insurance plan and finding alternatives to Middle Eastern oil. His ability to implement these plans will be constrained by the stuttering economy, which could be in recession, and continuing financial crisis.
Many of these promises are expensive and could be complicated by record budget deficits, a looming entitlement crisis as the Baby Boom generation retires.
The preliminary results suggest a startling turnaround from just four years ago, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, and benefited from a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The party’s intellectual leaders spoke of a permanent Republican majority in Washington.
Overall, voters went to the polls in a sour mood about the economy, the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush, all factors working in Sen. Obama’s favour. It would have been an uphill struggle for any Republican.
Sen. Obama also took Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Democratic-leaning states where Sen. McCain competed, believing his record of crossing party lines would win over independents and some Democrats.
Sen. Obama won in traditionally Democratic turf across the Northeast and elsewhere. He took New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, his home state of Illinois and the District of Columbia. Sen. McCain won, as expected, in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Wyoming, as well as North Dakota and Georgia, two states Sen. Obama reached for.
National exit poll results found Sen. Obama won two-thirds of Hispanics and more than two-thirds of voters aged 18 to 29. He took 96% of black voters, who increased their share of the electorate from 11% to 13%. He took one in four evangelical votes, up from 21% for Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
Sen. Obama won among women but lost among men, national exit polls show. And he won among independents but divided the suburban vote.
Helping Sen. Obama: Democrats make up a larger share of the electorate this year than they did four years ago, when equal numbers of voters identified as Democrats and as Republicans. This time, 40% said they were Democrats and just 32% said they were Republicans.
Eighty-five percent of all voters said they were very or somewhat worried about the nation’s economy, with eight in 10 worried that the economic crisis would harm their family’s finances over the next year, according to early exit-poll results. Just 20% of voters said the country was generally going in the right direction. The economy was far and away the No. 1 issue for voters.
Sen. McCain struggled to connect on both economic and foreign policy. Half of all voters said they expected their taxes to go up no matter who wins, despite a campaign by Sen. McCain to paint his rival as a tax raiser. And while Sen. McCain repeatedly argued that the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq, more than six in 10 voters disapproved of the war.
Voters were more likely to say that Sen. McCain has the experience for the job than Sen. Obama. But voters were more likely to say that Sen. Obama was in touch with people like them, and had the right judgment to make a good president.
Amazing Race
Tuesday’s voting brought to a close the longest and most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history, with the general election costing about $1.6 billion, double the 2004 presidential race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. After nearly two years of campaigning, Americans were set to make history, whatever the outcome.
The race featured the first woman, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to seriously contend for a party nomination. Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman to appear on the Republican ticket. And Sen. Obama broke ground as the first black party nominee for president.
Americans went to the polls in what were expected to be record numbers, including the 30% of all voters who voted early. In total, voter-registration numbers were up 7.3% compared with the last presidential election, for a total of 153 million eligible voters.
By tradition, the first ballots were cast just after midnight Tuesday in tiny Dixville Notch, N.H. Sen. Obama got 15 votes and Sen. McCain six.
The race also featured the most extensive use yet of the Internet. Online social networks spread the campaign to corners of the country that had never before experienced such intense electioneering.
“Thank God it’s finally here,” said Jeremiah Christiansen, 29 years old, of Election Day. Christiansen voted for Sen. Obama in Northern Hills Christian Church in Adams County, Colo. The state is one of many that were once reliably Republican yet fiercely contested this year.
Harnessing a national mood of pessimism and a record fund-raising total, Sen. Obama delivered a call for change in American domestic and foreign policy combined with a slogan of “hope.”
In the campaign’s final hours, Sen. McCain and his top advisers held out hope for a come-from-behind victory, arguing that undecided voters came from groups more likely to vote Republican. Diving into the underdog role, the Republican nominee spent the final days of the campaign telling supporters that the momentum was turning his way.
Last-Minute Push
Sen. Obama began the day by casting his own ballot in his hometown of Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Malia, 10 years old, and Sasha, 7, looking on.
“The journey ends but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” Sen. Obama told reporters. “I noticed that Michelle took a long time, though. I had to check to see who she was voting for.”
He then headed for a last-minute campaign stop at a United Auto Workers hall in Indianapolis.
In Phoenix, Sen. McCain and his wife, Cindy, cast their ballots at Albright United Methodist Church, as supporters outside cheered him on. He emerged with an “I voted today” sticker on his right lapel. From there, he travelled to Grand Junction, Colo., for his final campaign rally.
“America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here,” he told several thousand people. He exited to a rock ballad by the band Whitesnake, with a chorus, “Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever known.”
Sen. McCain also campaigned Tuesday in New Mexico, one of the half dozen states President Bush won in 2004, which he ended up losing. En route back to Arizona, he told reporters, “We’ve had a great ride, a great experience and it’s full of memories that we will always treasure.”
It was to be a long night of vote counting after polls closed in the new battlegrounds of the Rocky Mountain West. Few surprises were expected further west, with Sen. Obama expected to wrap up the Pacific Coast and his native Hawaii, while Sen. McCain was the expected victor in Alaska, home of his running mate, Gov. Palin.
In other balloting, Democrats were hoping for gains in the House and Senate. Republicans were expected to fare better in the 11 governors’ races also being decided. Voters in some states also were deciding ballot measures, including a gay marriage question in California and a ban on affirmative action in Colorado.
Regardless of the outcome, many African-Americans were celebrating how far a black man had come.
“I wanted to be part of this historic day in our country and watch people in this community exercise their God-given right,” said Earl Simms, a 65-year-old former city safety manager standing at the head of the line at his Jacksonville, Fla., precinct.
Benjamin T. Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said his 92-year-old grandmother, whose grandfather was a slave, was “giddy” at the prospect of seeing young black girls holding pajama parties at the White House.
“At this moment, it feels as if anything is possible, and that is the way it needs to be in this country,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
Many McCain supporters said Sen. Obama was not ready for the presidency.
Barack Obama Wins Historic
“In the situation we’re in with the economy, I don’t think we have time for an on-the-job training,” said Bret Martin, 49 years old, who was voting in rural Adams County, Colo.
Months in the Making
Whoever wins will have big promises to keep: cutting taxes, expanding health insurance among the 44 million Americans currently without it, creating alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, reducing troop levels in Iraq and stabilizing Afghanistan.
All this will have to be carried out amid record budget deficits, a looming crisis in Social Security and Medicare spending as the Baby Boom generation retires and fears that the nation is on the edge of a deep recession. In the short run, the president will have to prime the flagging economy and help shape the rescue of the nation’s financial system.
Republicans entered the race hoping the party could wrap up a third straight term by replicating the map President Bush created in his two victories. Democrats had to hold the states that Democrat John Kerry took four years ago and take additional territory.
Some in the Democratic party were thinking bigger. Under Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the party began laying the groundwork for expanding the playing field. Sen. Obama built on that with a 50-state organization of his own. An influx of immigrants, Latinos and young professionals in states such as Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia had shifted the demographics of once-strong Republican regions.
Economic woes and Republican scandals reaffirmed Ohio’s status as a battleground state, and the home-foreclosure crisis transformed the landscape in Florida and Nevada.
Sen. Obama launched his candidacy on the statehouse steps of Springfield, Ill., nearly two years ago. He was a freshman senator known mainly for a keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and a best-selling book. The son of a white woman from Kansas and a Kenyan immigrant who once herded goats, the relative newcomer came with a foreign-sounding name and associations that would prove to be chronic liabilities.
His spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had issued incendiary sermons from the pulpit of Sen. Obama’s church. A convicted felon, Tony Rezko, helped him purchase a Chicago home. And Republicans tried to tie Sen. Obama to an associate and neighbor, William Ayers, a domestic terrorist in the 1960s.
With that baggage, he took on one of the most powerful names in Democratic politics, Sen. Clinton, defeating her after a long primary fight. Sen. Obama’s campaign beat the Clinton machine by going where she was not, racking up victories in states such as Idaho, Kansas and Wyoming.
His general election campaign pitted him against a Republican with a reputation for bucking his party. Sen Obama stuck to two themes relentlessly: Sen. McCain, he said, offered a third term for President Bush, while he was the agent of change.
Sen. McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, came to national fame 35 years ago as a prisoner in the Vietnam War. He turned to politics after injuries sustained in captivity prevented him from flying.
He first ran for president in 2000, losing in the GOP primary to Bush. In preparing for the 2008 contest, Sen. McCain worked to establish himself as the front-runner.
His campaign was large and expensive and nearly collapsed in July 2007. He began again with a barebones operation. He ran as a promoter of the war in Iraq at a time when it was deeply unpopular. He pushed for and then backed the early 2007 surge in troops that turned out to be an important factor in the country’s turnaround.
After winning the nomination, Sen. McCain still had work to do with the conservative base of his party. Many in the base were angered by his push to change the nation’s immigration laws and campaign-finance rules, his support for embryonic stem cell research and his opposition to the Bush tax cuts.
The choice of Gov. Palin thrilled conservatives but turned off other voters, especially the independents he would need. Exit polls Tuesday found that six in 10 voters said she is not qualified to be president should it become necessary. Those voters overwhelmingly favored Sen. Obama for president.
His campaign received a jolt of energy in October when Sen. Obama told a voter in Ohio, who became known as “Joe the Plumber,” that he believed it was appropriate for tax policy to “spread the wealth around.” Sen. McCain pressed that point to the end, an attempt to revive a topic that was traditionally a Republican strength.
But Sen. McCain struggled to find a message that would resonate, running at various times as the experienced insider, a maverick who would shake up Washington, a bipartisan conciliator and a tough-minded “Country First” war hero.
On election eve, Sen. Obama campaigned where he officially began his general election bid, in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where explosive growth has transformed the state from reliably Republican to legitimate swing state. The last Democrat to win Virginia was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Sen. McCain traversed some 3,700 miles on Monday, ending the day in Prescott, Ariz., on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, the same place where one of his role models, Sen. Barry Goldwater, began and ended his own 1964 presidential campaign.
As he has often before, Sen. McCain told the crowd the story of how many Arizonans had run and lost their races for president, including Sen. Goldwater, the late Rep. Morris Udall, and former Gov. Bruce Babbitt.
“Arizona might be the only state in America where mothers don’t tell their children that someday they can grow up and be president of the United States,” he said, reprising one of his favorite quips.
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Barack Obama Wins Historic Presidential Contest
By Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman, WSJ
5 November 2008
Key battleground wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida put Sen. Barack Obama over the top in a hard-fought presidential race, defeating rival Sen. John McCain.
Sen. McCain’s loss in the Buckeye State followed losses in New Mexico and New Hampshire, swing states he was hoping to secure for the Republican column.
With the victory, Sen. Obama becomes the nation’s 44th president, riding a tide of voter discontent with the economy, the war in Iraq and eight years of Republican White House rule. A victory after an epic two-year campaign would alter the racial dynamics of a country that has long struggled with questions of colour.
It would also usher in a period of dominance for Democrats in Washington for the first time since the early years of Bill Clinton’s first term. In early returns, Democrats had already captured several Republican-held Senate seats in New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia. Democrats were also gunning to increase their margins in the House.
Fierce Headwinds
Sen. McCain made a major push for Ohio, spending two days there last week in hopes of winning the 20 electoral votes of a state that nearly always sides with the winner.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Sen. McCain also targeted Pennsylvania, a state won by Democrats in the past four elections. He hoped an upset win there would offset any losses he might suffer elsewhere, but a teetering economy and a desire for change in the Keystone State put it out of reach.
If the final results turn out as projected, Sen. Obama’s party will control both houses of Congress as well as the White House, setting the scene for Democrats to push an ambitious agenda from health care to financial regulation. These plans will face fierce headwinds from the sour economy and giant budget deficits.
Sen. Obama’s campaign was built on record fund-raising and a vast national campaign network. He would enter office with a long policy wish list that includes ending the war in Iraq, implementing a near-universal health-insurance plan and finding alternatives to Middle Eastern oil. His ability to implement these plans will be constrained by the stuttering economy, which could be in recession, and continuing financial crisis.
Many of these promises are expensive and could be complicated by record budget deficits, a looming entitlement crisis as the Baby Boom generation retires.
The preliminary results suggest a startling turnaround from just four years ago, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, and benefited from a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The party’s intellectual leaders spoke of a permanent Republican majority in Washington.
Overall, voters went to the polls in a sour mood about the economy, the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush, all factors working in Sen. Obama’s favour. It would have been an uphill struggle for any Republican.
Sen. Obama also took Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Democratic-leaning states where Sen. McCain competed, believing his record of crossing party lines would win over independents and some Democrats.
Sen. Obama won in traditionally Democratic turf across the Northeast and elsewhere. He took New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, his home state of Illinois and the District of Columbia. Sen. McCain won, as expected, in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Wyoming, as well as North Dakota and Georgia, two states Sen. Obama reached for.
National exit poll results found Sen. Obama won two-thirds of Hispanics and more than two-thirds of voters aged 18 to 29. He took 96% of black voters, who increased their share of the electorate from 11% to 13%. He took one in four evangelical votes, up from 21% for Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
Sen. Obama won among women but lost among men, national exit polls show. And he won among independents but divided the suburban vote.
Helping Sen. Obama: Democrats make up a larger share of the electorate this year than they did four years ago, when equal numbers of voters identified as Democrats and as Republicans. This time, 40% said they were Democrats and just 32% said they were Republicans.
Eighty-five percent of all voters said they were very or somewhat worried about the nation’s economy, with eight in 10 worried that the economic crisis would harm their family’s finances over the next year, according to early exit-poll results. Just 20% of voters said the country was generally going in the right direction. The economy was far and away the No. 1 issue for voters.
Sen. McCain struggled to connect on both economic and foreign policy. Half of all voters said they expected their taxes to go up no matter who wins, despite a campaign by Sen. McCain to paint his rival as a tax raiser. And while Sen. McCain repeatedly argued that the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq, more than six in 10 voters disapproved of the war.
Voters were more likely to say that Sen. McCain has the experience for the job than Sen. Obama. But voters were more likely to say that Sen. Obama was in touch with people like them, and had the right judgment to make a good president.
Amazing Race
Tuesday’s voting brought to a close the longest and most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history, with the general election costing about $1.6 billion, double the 2004 presidential race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. After nearly two years of campaigning, Americans were set to make history, whatever the outcome.
The race featured the first woman, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to seriously contend for a party nomination. Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman to appear on the Republican ticket. And Sen. Obama broke ground as the first black party nominee for president.
Americans went to the polls in what were expected to be record numbers, including the 30% of all voters who voted early. In total, voter-registration numbers were up 7.3% compared with the last presidential election, for a total of 153 million eligible voters.
By tradition, the first ballots were cast just after midnight Tuesday in tiny Dixville Notch, N.H. Sen. Obama got 15 votes and Sen. McCain six.
The race also featured the most extensive use yet of the Internet. Online social networks spread the campaign to corners of the country that had never before experienced such intense electioneering.
“Thank God it’s finally here,” said Jeremiah Christiansen, 29 years old, of Election Day. Christiansen voted for Sen. Obama in Northern Hills Christian Church in Adams County, Colo. The state is one of many that were once reliably Republican yet fiercely contested this year.
Harnessing a national mood of pessimism and a record fund-raising total, Sen. Obama delivered a call for change in American domestic and foreign policy combined with a slogan of “hope.”
In the campaign’s final hours, Sen. McCain and his top advisers held out hope for a come-from-behind victory, arguing that undecided voters came from groups more likely to vote Republican. Diving into the underdog role, the Republican nominee spent the final days of the campaign telling supporters that the momentum was turning his way.
Last-Minute Push
Sen. Obama began the day by casting his own ballot in his hometown of Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Malia, 10 years old, and Sasha, 7, looking on.
“The journey ends but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” Sen. Obama told reporters. “I noticed that Michelle took a long time, though. I had to check to see who she was voting for.”
He then headed for a last-minute campaign stop at a United Auto Workers hall in Indianapolis.
In Phoenix, Sen. McCain and his wife, Cindy, cast their ballots at Albright United Methodist Church, as supporters outside cheered him on. He emerged with an “I voted today” sticker on his right lapel. From there, he travelled to Grand Junction, Colo., for his final campaign rally.
“America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here,” he told several thousand people. He exited to a rock ballad by the band Whitesnake, with a chorus, “Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever known.”
Sen. McCain also campaigned Tuesday in New Mexico, one of the half dozen states President Bush won in 2004, which he ended up losing. En route back to Arizona, he told reporters, “We’ve had a great ride, a great experience and it’s full of memories that we will always treasure.”
It was to be a long night of vote counting after polls closed in the new battlegrounds of the Rocky Mountain West. Few surprises were expected further west, with Sen. Obama expected to wrap up the Pacific Coast and his native Hawaii, while Sen. McCain was the expected victor in Alaska, home of his running mate, Gov. Palin.
In other balloting, Democrats were hoping for gains in the House and Senate. Republicans were expected to fare better in the 11 governors’ races also being decided. Voters in some states also were deciding ballot measures, including a gay marriage question in California and a ban on affirmative action in Colorado.
Regardless of the outcome, many African-Americans were celebrating how far a black man had come.
“I wanted to be part of this historic day in our country and watch people in this community exercise their God-given right,” said Earl Simms, a 65-year-old former city safety manager standing at the head of the line at his Jacksonville, Fla., precinct.
Benjamin T. Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said his 92-year-old grandmother, whose grandfather was a slave, was “giddy” at the prospect of seeing young black girls holding pajama parties at the White House.
“At this moment, it feels as if anything is possible, and that is the way it needs to be in this country,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
Many McCain supporters said Sen. Obama was not ready for the presidency.
Barack Obama Wins Historic
“In the situation we’re in with the economy, I don’t think we have time for an on-the-job training,” said Bret Martin, 49 years old, who was voting in rural Adams County, Colo.
Months in the Making
Whoever wins will have big promises to keep: cutting taxes, expanding health insurance among the 44 million Americans currently without it, creating alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, reducing troop levels in Iraq and stabilizing Afghanistan.
All this will have to be carried out amid record budget deficits, a looming crisis in Social Security and Medicare spending as the Baby Boom generation retires and fears that the nation is on the edge of a deep recession. In the short run, the president will have to prime the flagging economy and help shape the rescue of the nation’s financial system.
Republicans entered the race hoping the party could wrap up a third straight term by replicating the map President Bush created in his two victories. Democrats had to hold the states that Democrat John Kerry took four years ago and take additional territory.
Some in the Democratic party were thinking bigger. Under Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the party began laying the groundwork for expanding the playing field. Sen. Obama built on that with a 50-state organization of his own. An influx of immigrants, Latinos and young professionals in states such as Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia had shifted the demographics of once-strong Republican regions.
Economic woes and Republican scandals reaffirmed Ohio’s status as a battleground state, and the home-foreclosure crisis transformed the landscape in Florida and Nevada.
Sen. Obama launched his candidacy on the statehouse steps of Springfield, Ill., nearly two years ago. He was a freshman senator known mainly for a keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and a best-selling book. The son of a white woman from Kansas and a Kenyan immigrant who once herded goats, the relative newcomer came with a foreign-sounding name and associations that would prove to be chronic liabilities.
His spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had issued incendiary sermons from the pulpit of Sen. Obama’s church. A convicted felon, Tony Rezko, helped him purchase a Chicago home. And Republicans tried to tie Sen. Obama to an associate and neighbor, William Ayers, a domestic terrorist in the 1960s.
With that baggage, he took on one of the most powerful names in Democratic politics, Sen. Clinton, defeating her after a long primary fight. Sen. Obama’s campaign beat the Clinton machine by going where she was not, racking up victories in states such as Idaho, Kansas and Wyoming.
His general election campaign pitted him against a Republican with a reputation for bucking his party. Sen Obama stuck to two themes relentlessly: Sen. McCain, he said, offered a third term for President Bush, while he was the agent of change.
Sen. McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, came to national fame 35 years ago as a prisoner in the Vietnam War. He turned to politics after injuries sustained in captivity prevented him from flying.
He first ran for president in 2000, losing in the GOP primary to Bush. In preparing for the 2008 contest, Sen. McCain worked to establish himself as the front-runner.
His campaign was large and expensive and nearly collapsed in July 2007. He began again with a barebones operation. He ran as a promoter of the war in Iraq at a time when it was deeply unpopular. He pushed for and then backed the early 2007 surge in troops that turned out to be an important factor in the country’s turnaround.
After winning the nomination, Sen. McCain still had work to do with the conservative base of his party. Many in the base were angered by his push to change the nation’s immigration laws and campaign-finance rules, his support for embryonic stem cell research and his opposition to the Bush tax cuts.
The choice of Gov. Palin thrilled conservatives but turned off other voters, especially the independents he would need. Exit polls Tuesday found that six in 10 voters said she is not qualified to be president should it become necessary. Those voters overwhelmingly favored Sen. Obama for president.
His campaign received a jolt of energy in October when Sen. Obama told a voter in Ohio, who became known as “Joe the Plumber,” that he believed it was appropriate for tax policy to “spread the wealth around.” Sen. McCain pressed that point to the end, an attempt to revive a topic that was traditionally a Republican strength.
But Sen. McCain struggled to find a message that would resonate, running at various times as the experienced insider, a maverick who would shake up Washington, a bipartisan conciliator and a tough-minded “Country First” war hero.
On election eve, Sen. Obama campaigned where he officially began his general election bid, in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where explosive growth has transformed the state from reliably Republican to legitimate swing state. The last Democrat to win Virginia was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Sen. McCain traversed some 3,700 miles on Monday, ending the day in Prescott, Ariz., on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, the same place where one of his role models, Sen. Barry Goldwater, began and ended his own 1964 presidential campaign.
As he has often before, Sen. McCain told the crowd the story of how many Arizonans had run and lost their races for president, including Sen. Goldwater, the late Rep. Morris Udall, and former Gov. Bruce Babbitt.
“Arizona might be the only state in America where mothers don’t tell their children that someday they can grow up and be president of the United States,” he said, reprising one of his favorite quips.
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