They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world.
The American people yesterday demonstrated once again their unique capacity for self-renewal by electing the first black man as head of state, not much more than a generation after the country's African-Americans were accorded full civil rights.
And a mere four years after apparently confirming in place a semi-permanent conservative ascendancy, US voters swept into office a Democratic party that is comfortably to the left of anything the country has seen in the last 30 years.
Yesterday's results were head-spinning stuff. In electing Barack Obama president by a solid margin, accompanied by a congress with the biggest Democratic majority since the 1970s, Americans have signalled a dramatic change in the direction of the world's sole superpower.
The country regarded loftily by many Europeans as hopelessly racist and irredeemably right wing has voted to be ruled by a black man, at the head of a party committed to economic redistribution and a foreign policy rooted in peaceful diplomatic engagement.
Al Jazeera English, based in Doha, Qatar, offers the following four stories as an election package:
The lead, The future under President Obama by Rob Reynolds, formerly a CNN correspondent, attempts to explain to the Middle East what they might expect, but it reads more like a platform than a plan.
The view of the man in the Arab street is murky. A new Middle East under Obama? interviews Egyptians, whose reactions range from skeptical to cynical.
Gaza holding scant hopes seems an odd headline for interviews with Palestinians who each voice their hopes to Barack Obama.
For instance, Linda Ali Hassan, 23, a school teacher and the only woman surveyed in either story, says,
I hope that the new US president will be objective in his treatment of the Palestinians and the Israelis in regard to essential issues in the Middle East such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the peace process, co-existence and prisoners.
I also ask him to achieve justice between the Palestinians and the Israelis regarding commitment to the peace process.
He has to push the Israelis to implement the decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the wall in the West Bank.
The new president should recognise the results of the Palestinian elections and push the Israelis to do so.
Obama ... will seek the achievement of Palestinian goals in the context of his origins as a black man who has suffered from discrimination.
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