'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,' Mr Obama said in his victory speech.

Others have won US presidential races by more impressive margins. Republicans Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Richard Nixon in 1972 carried 49 out of the 50 states. Democrats Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 won more than 60 per cent of the votes.

But none of them looked like Mr Obama. If they had worn wigs, they would not have looked out of place in the Constitutional Convention that drew up the United States Constitution in September 1787.

That noble document originally counted a black slave as 'three-fifths' of a free white person. Someone who looked like Mr Obama - say, the offspring of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and his slave Sally Hemmings - was considered only 'three-fifths' of a whole person in the US 220 years ago.

He did not legally become a whole person till 1868, when the 'three-fifths' formulation was expunged from the Constitution following the Civil War.

He could not attend desegregated schools till 1954, when the US Supreme Court overruled 'separate but equal' facilities for different races.

He was not even assured of a vote till 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Mr Obama was only four years old in 1965. Johnson was president then. After he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act the following year, Johnson remarked to an aide that he may just have signed the death warrant for the Democratic party in the south for a generation.

He was prescient: Only two Democrats won the presidency after Johnson - Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Significantly, both were southerners.

Mr Obama is the first Democratic northerner to win the presidency since John Kennedy in 1960. And he did so by winning not only the Democratic 'Blue states' that Mr Al Gore in 2000 and Mr John Kerry in 2004 won. He won also two of the reddest of 'Red states' - Virginia, the linchpin of the old slave-owning southern confederacy, and North Carolina.

Mr Obama, an African-American, won in states that had only 140 years ago prosecuted a bloody war precisely so as to ensure that people who looked like him remained 'three-fifths' of whole persons.

Race was the 'American dilemma', Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote in 1944. For generations, the US was unable to reconcile its high ideals of human dignity - all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - with its treatment of minorities, especially African-Americans. That the US now will have an African-American President signals its practice has finally caught up with its ideals.

It is not possible to downplay the historic significance of Mr Obama's victory. Whether or not he becomes a great President, a candidate for Mount Rushmore, he is already a historic figure.

None of the slave-owning founding fathers would have conceived of him as a potential successor. 'The dream of our founders is alive in our times,' Mr Obama said, but the fact is he did not figure in the dreams of most of the founders.

Even Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves but believed African-Americans would be better off if they were repatriated to Africa, would not have credited the possibility of a black man occupying the White House one day.

He will in part because white America has changed, and in part because the US is no longer as white as it was.

Exit polls indicate that only 43 per cent of whites voted for Mr Obama. That is more whites than voted for Mr Gore in 2000 and Mr Kerry in 2004 but about the same as voted for Mr Clinton in 1996.

Although both Mr Gore and Mr Kerry received about 41 per cent of the white vote, Mr Gore won half a million more votes overall than Mr George W. Bush did in 2004 and Mr Kerry lost by only two percentage points in 2004.

Democratic presidential candidates have long depended on minority voters and Mr Obama was no exception in this regard.

But Mr Obama, unlike Mr Gore and Mr Kerry, won because minority voters turned up in far larger numbers this year than they did in 2004 and 2000. Race did play a role in this allegedly post-race election - in Mr Obama's favour.

Interestingly, though Mr Obama scored a bigger electoral college victory than Mr Bush did in either 2000 or 2004, he performed less well in the south, apart from Virginia and North Carolina, than did Mr Clinton, Mr Gore and even Mr Kerry. He won far fewer southern counties than they did.

And significantly, in almost all the cases where Democrats picked up Senate seats, the victorious Democratic Senate candidates received a larger portion of the vote than Mr Obama did in those states. His coat-tails do not appear to have been very long.

The so-called 'Bradley effect' - where white voters tell pollsters they would vote for a black candidate but do not do so when they enter the voting booth - does not exist. If it did, Mr Obama would not have received as large a share of the white vote as Mr Clinton did. But as the results of the Senate races suggest, it may not have disappeared altogether.

They are celebrating outside the White House - and in Harlem, Los Angeles, Miami and elsewhere - because nobody thought the US would elect a black man President.

But the US did - and surprised itself in the process - because it is now far more of a rainbow nation than it has ever been in its history.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that the US is really and truly multi-ethnic; who still wonders if the dream of its founders can be exceeded; who still questions the power of its polka-dot democracy, tonight is your answer.

janadas@sph.com.sg

YES, WE CAN

'This is our moment. This is our time...that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond...Yes, we can.'

CHANGE

'It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.'

LEADERSHIP

'To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores...our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.'

I HEAR YOU

'To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.'

UNITY

'Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other...in this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.'

VICTOR

'Above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.'

CHALLENGES

'The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.'