Another incredible performance. Especially considering it was, I believe, his fifth of the day, and the candidate probably hasn’t had more than five hours of sleep in the past three days.
The basic point Obama made is that we have to have the courage of our convictions. I’ll let him speak for himself, as best as I could transcribe him in the middle of hundreds of wildly cheering people and with a pitiful mobile-phone based internet connection.
“It’s easy to be against something, but that’s not what this movement, this ‘motion,’ that is happening right now is about. People want to come out for something.
“This is about, as Martin Luther King said, ‘the fierce urgency of now.’ Our nation is at war. Our planet is in peril. Our health care system is broken. Our education system leaves millions of children behind. The scale of these problems have outstripped the capacity of a broken and ragged system to deal with them.”
“Change in this country does not come from the top down, but from the bottom up.”
“I bet on you. If we will just gather together to challenge ourselves to be better: better parents, better students, better workers. If we can do that, there is no problem we cannot solve. That was the premise of this campaign.
“This week, we saw what was possible. You can already hear the naysayers: caucuses are different; young people won’t vote; Republicans, no chance. And even if it could happen, it shouldn’t happen.”
“The folks in Washington want to pickle me and stew me and boil the hope out of me until I think just like them, and then they’ll say he’s ready.
“The real gamble in this election is to have the same old folks doing the same old things.”
“Let me talk for a moment about false hopes. They said, ‘The moon, you’ll never get there, it’s too far away. Segregation? It’s been that way for a long time. Giving women the vote? Come on.'”
“We don’t need leaders to tell us what we can’t do. We need leaders who tell us what we can do. Hope is not an exercise in wishful thinking, or being ignorant of the roadblocks that stand between you and your dreams. I understand how difficult it will be to create a health care system hat works for everyone. But hope is the courage to persevere, even though we know how difficult things can be.”
Inspirational, and definitely worth the trip to Keene. Hope you enjoyed your evening serving of New Hampshire politics!
I enjoy hearing this candidate give a speech. He puts words together beautifully. But his campaign has gotten little scrutiny for months. Krugman in the NYT quoted the Project for Excellence in Journalism as saying that his media coverage had been more favorable than that of any other candidate.
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p>He was elevated from relative obscurity to be the other half of the duo that was presented to us as the only viable candidates before any caucus was held or any vote cast. Would America elect a black man or a white woman?
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p>Both of the duo have strong ties to the corporate wing of their party – the Democratic Leadership Council. And now it is coming out on a number of web sites that Obama raises money from the K Street crowd. He is right up there with Hillary in getting contributions from Wall Street.
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p>To me, this says that his rhetoric is empty rhetoric. Beautiful words and not much else. That he is going to unite America, get everybody at the table and through bipartisanship, get things done. This was the same line that George Bush ran in 2000. Can’t believe that people are falling for it again!
“The real gamble in this election is to have the same old folks doing the same old things.”
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p>I don’t think so.
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p>The real gamble is electing someone with virtually no record to be judged by. What would be Obama’s casino plan?