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Rivals Barack Obama, John McCain (before a TV duel in 2008): Congratulations with greatness
Photo:
Ron Edmonds / AP
The 2008 election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama was tough and not devoid of racist undertones.
Still, on November 4, at the moment of his greatest political defeat, McCain remembered Booker T. Washington.
The civil rights activist, born as a slave on a plantation, was once the first black person to be invited to dinner in the White House in 1901 by US President Theodore Roosevelt.
Republican McCain picked up on this episode, which once caused a sensation, and expressed his respect to his Democratic adversary: "Today America is a far cry from the cruelty and terrifying fanaticism of the time. There is no better evidence of this than choosing an African American to the President of the United States. "
Twelve years and three election campaigns later, nothing is as it was in US politics.
After a hurricane with insults, filth and suspicion, the outcome of the 2020 election is just as uncertain as the question of whether US President Donald Trump would even acknowledge a possible failure.
While his opponent Joe Biden immediately admitted to it in one of the two TV duels, Trump refused to make a clear statement.
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