PHOENIX, Arizona -- Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain conceded the presidential race before a crowd of supporters in Phoenix on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. He also congratulated Sen. Barack Obama. Here is a transcript:

Sen. John McCain concedes defeat in the presidential election to Barack Obama.

McCain: Thank you. Thank you, my friends. Thank you for coming here on this beautiful Arizona evening.

My friends, we have -- we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.

A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama to congratulate him.

To congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

The presidential contest shows unusually sharp differences on economic policy.

The election is shaping up as a contest between two sharply different economic approaches.  More than in Clinton-Bush or Clinton-Dole- more even than in Bush-Kerry- this election will offer a stark choice.  Do you favor a continuation of low-taxation policies and a limited role for the government?  Or do you think Washington should actively try to rebuild infrastructure, develop alternative-energy supplies and lessen wage inequality?  On these economic issues and more, John McCain and Barack Obama are miles apart.

Sarah Palin's War on Science
The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.

In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."