It's 3am--and I haven't blogged in ages--but I feel you need to read Barack Obama's latest speech in Iowa:
A little less than one year from today you will go into the voting booth and you will select the next President of the United States. Here’s the good news. The name G.W. Bush will not be on the ballot. The name of my cousin Dick Cheney will not be on the ballot. We’ve been trying to hide that for a long time. Everybody has a black sheep in the family. [laughter]
The era of Scooter Libby justice and Brownie incompetence and Karl Rove politics will finally be over. But the question you’re gonna have to ask yourself when you caucus in January and you vote in November is what’s next for America. We are at a defining moment in our history…The promise that so many generations fought for seems like it’s slipping away…we’ve lost faith that our leaders can or will do anything about it.
It is because of those failures that America is listening…we not only have a moment of great challenge, but a moment of great opportunity. We have a chance to bring the American people together, in a new majority…
That’s why telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do. Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won’t do…
If we are really serious about winning this election Democrats, then we can’t be afraid of losing. The party of Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt and Kennedy has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people…when we summoned the entire nation to a common purpose, a higher purpose.
A party that doesn’t just focus on how to win, but why we should. A party that doesn’t just offer change as a slogan but real, meaningful change, change that America can believe in. That’s why I’m in this race, that’s why I’m running for the Presidency of the United States, to offer change that we can believe in!…I am in this race because I want to stop talking about the outrage of 47 million Americans without healthcare and start actually doing something about it. I expanded healthcare in Illinois by bringing Democrats and Republicans together, by taking on the insurance industry and that is how I will make certain that ever American in this country has healthcare…and I will do by the end of my first term of the President of the United States of America.
…I am running for President because I am sick and tired of Democrats thinking that the only way to look tough on national security is by acting and voting like George Bush Republicans.
…When I am this party’s nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq…And he will not be able to say that I waivered on something as fundamental as whether it is okay for America to torture because it is never okay. That’s why I’m in it!
…I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century…and I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says you matter to us, your future is our future, and our moment is now. America, our moment is now.
Our moment is now!
I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit red America against blue America. I want to be the President of the United States of America.
And if those Republicans come at me with the same fear-mongering and swift-boating that they usually do, then I will take them head-on. Because I believe the American people are tired of fear, and tired of distractions…we can make this election not about fear, but about the future, and that will not be just a Democratic victory, that will be an American victory, a victory that America needs right now!
I am not in this race to fulfill some longheld ambitions or because I believe it’s somehow owed to me. I never expected to be here. I always knew this journey was improbable. I am running in this race because of of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Because I believe that there’s such a thing as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us.
…I’m in this race for the same reason that I found for jobs for jobless and hope for the hopeless on the streets of Chicago, for the same reason that I fought for justice and equality as a civil rights lawyer…I will never forget that the only reason that I’m standing here today is because someone had the courage to stand up!
…That’s why I’m running, Democrats. To keep the American dream alive..in this election, in this moment, let us reach for what we know is possible. A nation healed and world repaired. An America that believes again.
