With all of my heart (AND head), I want to see Obama win -- the country/planet simply cannot have it otherwise -- but I need to get something off my chest: in his thundering and historic speech, Obama glaringly made no mention of Al Gore.
Obama's internet-powered movement campaign was made possible by Gore's vision/efforts on the internet (one, two), Gore helped heavily in Clinton winning in 1992, he worked his ass off towards making their joint successes happen, turned around a race that was handicapped by Clinton fatigue and won in 2000 (before the SCOTUS stole it from him), is crusading around the world to educate people to act to mitigate global warming (against vicious opposition from the fossil fuel industry) and make our economy and civilization more sustainable, opposed the Iraq war before any other major politician did (10 days before Obama's speech), stood up valiantly when Bush started gobbling up the constitution and defended his country and its ideals. He still wasn't worthy enough of a shout out, Barack?
Al Gore (along with other honest Democrats like Dean, Kennedy, Feingold, Conyers and Kucinich etal) has been the conscience of the Democratic party during the worst years that the country has seen, during which people like the Clintons, Bayh etal were busy compromising Democratic values and their actions nearly rendered the party a permanent minority.
Needless to say, as a long-time supporter of both Gore and Obama, I was very disappointed with this snub.