By Jason Horowitz

November 5, 2008 | 1:49 p.m

Dateline Chicago: The Very End of the Obama Campaign

CHICAGO—On the night before Election Day, Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood was dead.

Concrete barriers and a couple of cops prevented the rare pedestrian from walking past the stately houses and manicured lawns and red and yellow leaves falling on Obama’s street. A couple of blocks away, the lights were on in the living room of Bill Ayers, the Chicago education advocate and former member of the 60s radical group the Weather Underground to whom the McCain campaign pinned its last ditch hopes of bringing down Obama. The room had an exposed brick wall, wood furniture that looked like it could have been purchased in a set from West Elm, unlighted candles, and a ceramic plate inscribed with the names of Ayers and his wife. Except for some yellow police tape entwined in a fence down the block, it hardly seemed special, and also seemed an odd thing to hang a campaign on.

Nearby, on 53rd street, strains of someone playing blues leaked out from the Checkerboard Lounge. The last, straggling diners finished their meals at the Calypso Café, where the salt and pepper comes in little Corona bottles and where the Obamas liked to grab dinner sometimes. Facing the back of the restaurant was the small glass storefront of State Senator Kwame Raoul, an office that was once held by another unusually named state senator who, less than 24 hours later, would be elected the 44th president of the United States.

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President O.

CHICAGO—In the end, it was Barack Obama by a mile.

With a comprehensive victory over John McCain that included solid wins in traditional Republican strongholds, the Obama campaign emphatically ended the era of George W. Bush and prepared to take power armed with a mandate for change.

"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," Mr. Obama said from a flag-adorned stage in front of tens of thousands of euphoric supporters here in Grant Park, "tonight is your answer."

Before Mr. Obama's declaration of victory, and John McCain's concession of defeat, Mr. Obama's closest allies were already heralding the dawning of a new political era.

“The fervor for change has now played itself out in the votes tonight,” Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania told The Observer, as swing states slid one after another towards Mr. Obama. “I think it was a vote of confidence. As difficult as this economy is right now, people believe that this vote for change tonight can be the beginning to help us dig out of that economic ditch.”

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