I was sent this video today by a friend of mine. I had seen it before, and remember having been moved by it, but he never had. He said he saw it today on Youtube while he was just surfing, and it really struck him. Here's the video, which I'm sure a ton of you have already seen, but I just wanted to post it again.
The speech Obama gave in 2004 was at the DNC - got knows its been gone over again and again, and everyone on this site is familiar with it. We often take that speech to be a repudiation of the GOP - but its not. It wasn't an insult to the GOP, but to a certain type of politics.
Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us.
It was true in 2004, when a cynical Bush campaign tried to chop up the country, with the complete cooperation of the media, into red and blue, to pump the electoral math to push Bush over Kerry.
And it's true today. This election. Right now. One candidate is trying to appeal to every state, work in every county, appeal to every vote. The other one is trying to focus on the states that 'count', the real ones, the important ones. Don't tell me that line doesn't apply to this election.
The spin masters. The negative ad peddlers. Who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Sounds like Rove. It is Rove.
Sounds like some other election also. Those who tell blatant lies about who contacted which embassy. Who claim experience where there is none. Who get on stage and yell "SHAME ON YOU" to an honorable campaign run by an honest man. This is spin. This is negativity. This is the campaign of anything goes.
Well I say to them tonight there is not a liberal America and conservative America, there is a United States of America.
There is not an important America, and an unimportant America.
There is not a black America, a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America. There is the United States of America.
And there is no racist America or sexist America. There is a United States of America. No matter our faults and our problems, we will not be pitted against each other - women against men, blacks against white, elites against hard-workers. We are being divided up by unimportant trivialities, and we can't let that happen.
I don't want to break down the whole video and the whole speech, but when I saw it again today, I saw it in a whole new mindset. My friend sent me the video and his email said "It's like his speech was written in advance to fight against Hillary!" How about that. A speech given at the DNC convention, in an effort to bring Democrats together against the politics of identity and negativity is now being seen as a repudiation of one of the leading Democratic figures in this country.
Obama isn't running only against Clinton and the GOP. He is running against the entire type of politics which splits us up into groups and says we are not the same. This is why so many of us are with him and want him to succeed. Because if he can't, I believe it says something profoundly sad about our country.
And I don't think we live in a sad country. I think we live in a hopeful one.