U.S. on Brink of History as Barack Obama and John McCain Await Election Day Results

By Helen Kennedy
Daily News Staff Writer

The epic election of 2008 built to a dramatic climax Tuesday as Barack Obama, a rookie senator on what he once called an "improbable" quest, stood thrillingly on the very brink of history.

Millions of people flocked to the polls to pull a lever on the tumultuous presidency of George W. Bush, who will leave office in January more scorned than even Nixon on his darkest day.

Republican John McCain clung to a small chance of defying the obits one last time, but it would take a Lazarus-scale miracle: dozens of polls show Obama heading for an electoral college romp and almost no Democratic state seems to be in play.

Across the country, eager voters started lining up in the dark, hours before polling places even opened.

Poll workers said they had never seen anything like it.

On West 46th Street, Roger Clark was on line in his wheelchair at 5:45 a.m., waiting to vote for Obama at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School.

"I never thought I would live to see this," he said. "It's a miracle."

Many Obama voters - both black and white - admitted to tearing up as they cast their ballots, overwhelmed by emotion as they voted to install America's first black president.

It has only been two generations since the fire hoses of Mississippi, since Rosa Parks was arrested for keeping her seat and Martin Luther King shot for marching.

Perhaps the most eloquent line of the campaign came not from one of Obama's speeches, but from one of his Missouri volunteers quoted by NPR a few days ago:

"Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama is running so our children can fly."

Across the world, foreigners also held their breath and watched to see what America would do. Obama, who is widely seen abroad as someone who can revive America's reputation and appeal, was heavily favored in foreign capitals.

Obama won New Hampshire's symbolic first votes at midnight, beating McCain 15-6 in GOP-leaning Dixville Notch and 17-10 in Hart's Location.

In Chicago, a relaxed Obama and his wife, Michelle, brought their two young daughters with them into the voting booth.

When his wife took an inordinately long time, Obama leaned over to peer at her paper ballot. "I had to check to see who she was voting for," he joked.

"The journey ends, but voting with my daughters - that was a big deal," he told reporters later.

Later he spent some time at an Indianapolis union hall, helping to make get out the vote calls. "Michael, this is Barack. How are you?" he said into the phone. "I'd like to get your vote. Don't be discouraged if there are some long lines." McCain and his wife, Cindy, voted quickly at Albright United Methodist Church in Phoenix and slipped out without talking to reporters.

To keep his three-decade-old ritual of watching a movie on Election Day, staffers loaded a flat-screen TV onto his campaign plane as he jetted off to a rally in Colorado.

"Nothing is inevitable here," he told a crowd packed into an airport hangar in Grand Junction. Pundits "may not know it, but the Mac is back."

His running mate, Sarah Palin, and her husband, Todd, flew all night from Nevada to cast ballots in their hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, in the same town hall she once presided over as mayor.

"I'm very, very honored, humbled. I thank God for this opportunity," she said. "So anxious to get to work for the American people."

Sen. Joseph Biden arrived to vote in Delaware with his wife, Jill, and holding tightly to the hand of his 91-year-old mother, Jean Finnegan Biden.

Bush stayed out of sight in the White House, amid the sound of hammer-pounding workers building grandstands along Pennsylvania Avenue for the next president's inaugural parade.

In the wake of two wars, Hurricane Katrina and a Wall Street meltdown, polls showed a Democratic tidal wave flooding the electoral map with blue: a big gain in the
House, a muscular Senate majority and the Presidency all appeared to be within the party's grasp.