Victory! The tally as of midnight, Pacific Standard Time

By Pablo Fanque,

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

The raw tally: Obama: 58,581,942; McCain: 52,925,833; House of Representatives: Democrats up 12; U.S. Senate: up 5.

Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States Tuesday night, kicking off an all-new chapter in America's history as the first African-American to hold the world's most important job. You know, in the brilliant Warren Beatty film, Bulworth, Bulworth explains that the country needs to begin a proactive racial deconstruction program, "I mean if everybody starts f***ing everybody, pretty soon we'll all be the same color." We haven't quite gotten there, but tonight we got started.

Barack Obama is not just an African-American, he is a half-white, half-black man, who was raised off shore, born of a Kansas woman and a Muslim Kenyan father. There's just a little bit of all of us in Obama. Tonight we took the big leap toward that deconstruction. It was moving to see African-Americans, white men and women, Asians, and Hispanics celebrating and weeping over someone who has taken down the last barrier brick by brick.

When I was 15 years old in 1968, not all black Americans were even allowed to vote until the the Voting Rights Act passed. It took 40 more years to finally propel an African-American into the White House.

And even the Republicans seemed to hop on the bandwagon in the end. John McCain made a most gracious concession speech and let his supporters know the country had done the Right Thing. A close friend of mine--a diehard Christian Conservative/longtime Bush supporter said to me "He's our President now. I can't wait to see what he makes happen."

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,'' Obama told 120,000 people gathered for a victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park.

The Illinois senator ends his long 21-month journey with a stunning electoral victory that bumped the Democrats' majority in Congress and marked the end of Republican dominance and malfeasance in Washington.

Obama crossed the threshold of 270 electoral votes early last night when television networks projected him winning the state of California (in Washington, we like to think it was us). As I write this, at midnight, he had at least 338 electoral votes to McCain's 145, according to the Associated Press and television network projections. Six states were still unclear.

His victory, along with Democratic gains in congressional contests, puts Democrats in firm control of the federal government for the first time since the early 1990s. And, baby, "we're not going to rock the boat. We're going to tip it over."

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