Barack Obama Already Hard at Work Building His Team

A half-hour earlier, at 11:19 p.m. New York time, McCain went on TV to concede.

"Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country," he told disappointed supporters in Phoenix.

Obama clinched it by wresting bellwethers Ohio and Florida from the GOP column and beating back a furious rear-guard McCain assault on Pennsylvania. He won big victories in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and other reliably Democratic states.

Obama was assured of at least 349 electoral votes, 79 more than the majority needed to win. He also captured Virginia—Richmond was once the capital of the Confederacy—which hadn't voted for a Democrat since 1964.

"It was over when we lost Pennsylvania," a glum senior McCain adviser told the Daily News.

The son of a white mother and Kenyan father, Obama shattered the racial ceiling that has stood for every election since George Washington's in 1789.

"The country is in love with the idea of Obama," a senior GOP strategist said, "and then the market melted down. If the Democrats [couldn't] win in this environment, they can't ever win."

The Democratic wave extended to Congress, where the party expanded its majorities in both chambers but fell just short of the nine-seat Senate pickup that would have guaranteed the party a filibuster-proof majority of 60.

Exit polls indicated the fragile state of the economy dominated the race—and that given the crisis, voters preferred a fresh face promising to boost the middle class at the expense of the powerful.

"The very rich won't get [a lot] richer anymore," a leading Democrat crowed as the prospects of a sea change in government policy emerged.

Even in states he lost, Obama ran stronger in many Republican enclaves than John Kerry did in 2004.

The scope of the national Democratic surge left an already dispirited Republican Party sifting through the wreckage.

"We won't rebound from this for several years," a top McCain adviser acknowledged.

Obama was fueled by a huge turnout of African-Americans as well as young voters, who defied predictions they wouldn't show up in the numbers predicted by Obama's strategists.

The returns also showed a majority of Americans bought into Obama's argument that this was a "change election"—and a Republican voting with Bush 90% of the time was unlikely to deliver that change.

Voters rejected the argument of McCain and his surrogates that Obama was not just unacceptably liberal—he was too inexperienced and untested to risk being given the job often described as Leader of the Free World.

They also spurned McCain's attacks against Obama's past associations with a Vietnam-era radical, his controversial ex-pastor and a tainted Chicago businessman.

"Obama played to our hopes and dreams and McCain played to their fears," a senior Republican strategist told The News.

Ironically, fear worked for Obama; he reminded Americans, terrified their financial well-being has been crippled by a tanking stock market and recession, just which party has been in charge the past eight years.

"The country says it wants change," said a glum Republican consultant. "What it really wants is stability—and they think Obama is better at reassuring than McCain."

Indeed, an election-eve USA Today/Gallup poll found that by a near 2-to-1 ratio, voters believe they'll be better off financially in four years with Obama.

Ultimately, the country's desire to repudiate President Bush's conservative domestic agenda and the Iraq war trumped lingering reservations about the 47-year-old's readiness to lead.

"Bush and Cheney lost this election as much and maybe more than Barack Obama won it," said a Republican who knows both well. "It's hard to believe, but Bush's negatives continue to grow"—a judgment confirmed by exit polls Tuesday.