He lost to incumbent Representative Bobby Rush by a margin of more than 2-to He was elected as the junior Senator from Illinois in November While serving as U.
He resigned his seat in the U. Senate on November 16, Domestic policy decisions dominated the first Days of the Obama administration. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which encourages fair pay for all workers and established new methods of protesting unfair paychecks, was the first signed legislation of the administration.
Among its other reforms, the Act strengthened Medicare and required the insurer to cover preventative screenings for cancer, diabetes, and blood pressure disorders. The Obama administration centered its foreign policy on drawing down the number of American forces stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. On May 2, , President Obama announced to the nation that the United States had conducted an operation which resulted in the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Negotiations with Russia led to the signing of a New START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Treaty, which limited the two countries to fewer strategic arms over the course of seven years through inspections and verification. He read deeply and widely about political and international affairs, graduating from Columbia with a political science major in A movie version of his Columbia years, Barry , was released in After spending an additional year in New York as a researcher with Business International Group, a global business consulting firm, Obama accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's largely poor and black South Side.
Obama's main assignment as an organizer was to launch the church-funded Developing Communities Project and, in particular, to organize residents of Altgeld Gardens to pressure Chicago's city hall to improve conditions in the poorly maintained public housing project. In , Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student, graduating magna cum laude and winning election as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review for the academic year As the first African American president in the long history of the law review, Obama drew widespread media attention and a contract from Random House to write a book about race relations.
The book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance , turned out to be mostly a personal memoir, focusing in particular on his struggle to come to terms with his identity as a black man raised by whites in the absence of his African father.
He wooed her ardently as memorialized in another movie, Southside with You , and after a four-year courtship they married in The Obamas settled in Chicago's racially integrated, middle-class Hyde Park neighborhood, where their first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in and their second daughter, Natasha called Sasha , was born in After directing Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive aimed at increasing black turnout in the election, Obama accepted positions as an attorney with the civil rights law firm of Miner, Barnhill and Galland and as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
When Palmer's congressional campaign faltered, she decided to run for reelection instead. Republicans controlled the state senate, and many of his black Democratic colleagues resented the hardball tactics he had employed against Palmer. But he adapted, developing cordial personal relations with legislators of both parties and cultivating Senate Democratic leader Emil Jones Jr.
Obama was able to get campaign finance reform and crime legislation enacted even when his party was in the minority, and after , when the Democrats won control of the Senate, he became a leading legislator on a wide range of issues, passing nearly bills aimed at helping children, old people, labor unions, and the poor. Rush remained in the House; he was reelected to his thirteenth consecutive term in As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early opponent of President George W.
When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U. Senate seat in after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.
It put the relatively unknown, young senator in the national spotlight. Senate since Reconstruction. During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and the health threat posed by avian flu. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana , on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia.
In August , Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets to welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope , in October On February 10, , Obama formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States. A victory in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the early frontrunner, the former first lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton , whom he outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June Obama chose Joseph R.
Biden Jr. Biden had been a U. They worked to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. On November 4, lines at polling stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds Virginia , Indiana and key battleground states Florida , Ohio that had been won by Republicans in recent elections.
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. To address the financial crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto industry and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut. In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq.
Barack Obama was reelected for a second term in , beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. The midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress. His second term was marked by several international events, including the killing of Osama bin Laden , the mastermind of the September 11 Attacks , by Seal Team Six on May 2,
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