Obama won because the voters blamed the financial crisis and Iraq War fiasco on the Republicans. Any Democratic candidate would have won against McCain. It is naive to call this the end of racial discrimination. Obama won 51 % of popular vote while McCain got 48%. Hence basically half the voters didn't vote for Obama. Since 43 % of White voters voted for Obama ( if you call these group of people non discriminatory) while 67% of white voters didn't vote for him and if you call this 67 % of people discriminatory, how can you say that "discrimination has ended" ?