Before thousands of cheering and screaming Virginians, many of them young, Obama just raised the spectre of national service. We will get you through college, but it won't be for free he argued. For working in a a veteran's clinic, or a homeless shelter, or the peace corps or the foreign service students will be able to afford their college dreams.
We will invest in you and you will do your part to invest in this country.
Edwards wisely pushed Kerry on national service in 2004; Edwards inspired and excited young voters, activist voters. I was just recently told on Daily Kos that national service was not popular with young voters and was a bad idea. But that sentiment was wrong.
That doesn't seem to be the case tonight. Young voters are not expecting a free ride, but rather want a fair deal. Obama has learned from Edwards and I am getting more uncomfortable in ancipation of the dynamo of their potential ticket.
The fourth turning is coming to pass! It is potent that the front-runner is not only calling for an expansion of national rights (health care) but of calling for both superifical and active physical engagement in civic duty. And the reintroduction of civics education. It is not coincidental that the return of duty and collective patriotism at its finest are demanded at the same time that our national security is at its most endangered, our economy is at its most unsteady and the future so uncertain. We are at a crisis. As Al Gore reminds us, an opportunity to save ourselves from danger and change our destiny.
Bush sapped that collectively wakening sense of a need for unity. But as we know it was fundamentally perverted and the effort could not sustain, without that sense ever evaporating.
These notions in other times would have terrified people, smacking of statism. They didn't in 1933. They didn't in 1936. Because the times had overwhelmed the mendacity of fear.
It is possible that such large, unwieldy ideas can indeed become part of a framework that has specific, detailed, everyday components. Details with far-reaching positive implications for radical change in health care, economic stimulus, infrastructure, education and foreign policy.
But we are the treshhold of more. Even if Obama loses out to Clinton, she is mirroring his memes. She is now talking about "we" more. She is talking about "change" more. Like Edwards modified both, now Obama modifies the remainder.
And they have all been modified by what's coming.
What a proud day. We are the party of not only the demographic and pragmatic future, we are the party of ideas, solutions and possibility.