Born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Kenyan father and a white American mother, Barack Obama, after completing his studies – in 1983 at Columbia University, where he studied Political Science and then, in 1991, at Harvard, where studied law–, moved to Chicago, and became active in the Democratic Party. In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois Senate, where, among other things, he expanded health care for poor families and helped reform criminal justice and welfare laws. In 2004, he was elected to the Senate, defeating Republican Alan Keyes in the first race in which the two primary candidates were African-American. During that campaign, Obama would gain national recognition following his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. Soon, Obama would become a major figure in his party.
Having a great impact on the world, a few years later, he would prevail over Hillary Clinton, becoming the first African-American to be nominated for the presidency in either major party. Finally, in the elections of November 2008, Obama would be the one who would succeed in winning against the Republican candidate John McCain and become the 44th President of the United States. In addition to his great victory, the number of citizens who participated in the elections and voted was also remarkable.
The relevant article on the front page of “Kathimerini” of November 5, 2008 is typical. “After a historic showdown, America seems to be turning a page,” it says at the beginning, while we then read that “about 150 million citizens voted for his election 44th president of the United States, the leader who will inherit from George W. Bush the heaviest burden of domestic and international challenges since the era of Franklin Roosevelt. Since dawn, hundreds of citizens have been queuing outside polling stations, often in heavy rain. The turnout was expected to break every post-war record and according to the first exit polls, the main criterion for the choice of voters (at a rate of 63%) was the economy.
It is important to emphasize that Obama’s victory reflected, in addition to great enthusiasm and great expectations for the following day, as Obama’s “electoral coalition contains social strata with very contradictory expectations. Indicative is his support from major Wall Street financial groups and media. Equally indicative was yesterday’s rally in the stock markets not only of Europe, but also of America itself, which discounted his victory – an event at least unusual for a Democratic candidate.”
According to the official data, he collected almost 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes, prevailing even in “difficult” states. On election night, tens of thousands of his supporters gathered in Chicago’s Grand Park, where he was, while shortly after winning the election, Obama resigned from the Senate. On January 20, 2009, a new president of the United States was sworn in in Washington, D.C., in the presence of hundreds of thousands of people who had gathered to watch the inauguration up close.
Column editor: Myrto Katsigera, Vassilis Minakakis, Antigone-Despina Poimenidou, Athanasios Syroplakis
