Obama Makes History

History was made June 3, 2008. The first draft goes something like this: Senator Barack Obama, the son of a black Kenyan man and a white Kansan woman, won the longest primary ever waged, becoming the first African-American major-party nominee for President of the United States. He narrowly defeated Senator Hillary Clinton, splitting with her some 36 million votes cast in fifty-seven contests, the highest turnout ever in a presidential primary. There is much to marvel at in this turn of events, including the fact that for much of this nation's past neither candidate would have been allowed to vote, much less run for the country's highest office.

But the historic significance of Obama's victory lies not just in the records and barriers it has broken but in how it was achieved. Tapping into a widespread yearning for change and revulsion over the Iraq War, Obama built from scratch a formidable political organization, one that beat an all but anointed favorite who at the outset had every advantage, including the support of party insiders and a hefty war chest.

Relying on small donations and volunteers, Obama assembled a broad coalition of supporters--one that included independents and crossover Republicans--not by running to the center or trying to out-muscle Republicans on national security but by offering a more peaceable alternative. When the smear campaigns against his race, religion and patriotism escalated, he endured by sticking to the issues and by rejecting "the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon."

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