Pop History Moment: The Election of Barack Obama

It was a hard-fought campaign, filled with the kind of lies and outrageous pandering to the lowest common denominator we've come to expect from the Republican Party, but also with a charismatic candidate the Democrats can only seem to muster up occasionally (although, not often enough for the liking of the Pop Culture Institute).

We knew going in it would be an historic campaign - from early on it was clear the Democrats were either going to field a black man or a woman - but for weeks now those in the punditocracy have been likening this one to the 1960 Presidential campaign, which pitted Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice President Richard Nixon, for the way it has gripped the zeitgeist not just in the United States but around the world.

Now it's official... Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has handily defeated the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain; the brief bump in the polls McCain got from selecting as his running mate Alaska governor Sarah Palin appears to have backfired on him, whereas Obama's selection of Joe Biden seems to have sufficiently quelled fears of Obama's lack of experience for the majority of American voters.
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