OK. Sen. Clinton made a great speech last night. As many of the pundits are saying (Olbermann, Bob Schieffer, etc.), it's hard to know what more Obama would have expected from her.
And yet...we will still hear the whispering from the chattering classes...was it enough? Will it bring unity? Will it turn the tide?
And we will still hear about trying to find the "red meat" of this convention...have the first two days been wasted...how Biden and Obama must deliver tremendous speeches in order to save his candidacy.
To which I offer the simplest solution to this nonsense:
Let's get to work.
Obama's campaign has been, and will always be, based upon the conviction that people power, grassroots ground power, will win this race. It's his big bet, and that bet is premised on the premise that we will be the change we seek.
It rises above the hot air of the pundits.
It rises above the hand wringing of consultants.
It rises above the constant meme of disunity.
It rises above the drama.
So here's the deal. We can sit here and worry about whether Obama is being strong enough, tough enough, whether Hillary did enough, whether PUMAs will torpedo Obama's campaign, whether Obama can win working class voters, whether his strategy is faulty, whether his inexperience will be exploited, and whether the Republican dirty tricksters and vote stealers will deliver this thing for McCain.
Or we can get to work.
We can commit hours. We can commit time. We can commit money.
We can walk. We can call. We can organize. We can write and blog.
We can talk to friends, neighbors and family. We can vote. And we can get out the vote.
We WILL be the "fierce urgency of now."
And if we do all those things, no one can ever say we didn't do enough, and we did not try to move this country forward.
I know I sound like a cheerleader at this point. But it comes back to my belief in a grassroots effort to win races.
I remember back in 1996, when I was working on a Congressional campaign in Indiana. I got to know then Lt. Gov. Frank O'Bannon who was running for Governor after Evan Bayh was term-limited. O'Bannon was one of the most genuine, nicest pols I have ever met. He carried himself in a grandfatherly way, seeking only to serve.
After an exhausting campaign, I remember being bleary-eyed on Election Day at 5 a.m., getting ready for the final push. I walked into the war room for GOTV operations, and there was O'Bannon, smiling and upbeat. His race was extremely close, and was possibly in doubt.
This man, 40 years my senior, was raring to go. He looked at me and said, "Steve, can you feel it?"
"Feel what, sir?"
"We're gonna win this thing on the grrrrround!"
That "ground" hung in the air like a confident growl. And he was right. O'Bannon won, as did Julia Carson, and all of our key candidates that day.
We are going to win this thing on the ground. Nowhere else.
Starting today, we need to commit to be the ground forces.
And that would be case regardless of who our nominee was. The stakes are just too great. The naysayers have the megaphones. We have the people. And we are aren't going to allow this ship to sink.
Or, as Obama would say, "Not this time."
Because this time is our time.