We've all experienced it before.
Maybe it was that independent band you fell in love with. Maybe it was that two-bit comedian you saw perform in some rundown club one random night whom captivated you.
But as time ever so unnoticingly passes; with every event you attend, more and more of the people there are unrecognizable. With every new song played, more people scream and clap wildly; with little knowledge of what they sang about in the first place.
Daily Kos; we have reached that point. Our candidate no longer belongs to us. He has moved on to bigger, and better things. And isn't it just so gosh darned wonderful?
Barack Obama; this candidate I have supported long before he became the presumptive Presidential Elect; this man who struck a chord deep within this son of an East African immigrant, and Euro-Caucasian descendant with one simple paragraph in the autumn of 2002; is no longer the domain of one subset of the greater populace of our nation.
Wielding the unconquerable armor of truth and context; this man who started with perhaps the greatest of restrictions in the history of our society has instead transcended them. In the face of misinformation; he has turned back the less subtle inferences of hatred on the unstable base they have generated from. In the face of establishment, he has created rapport with those who have perhaps never felt it before with one so visibly different.
At this crucible; in this moment in our history where the ultimate destination of our union resides in such peril; this man so many of us joined ranks with despite deep reservations has yet to let us down. At every moment when our angry sensibilities have led us to great disagreement with his public conduct; at nearly every engagement, the course he and his campaign have charted has proven right.
As such, today, the wildest dreams even his most sycophantic of early followers imagined is but the primer of possibility. Indeed; today, Barack Obama is no longer the candidate of Progressive America, African America, nor Daily Kos.
Barack Obama is the candidate of the American People.
Perhaps, should our continued hard work find union with the providence of fortune; one day, those of us invested from the inception of this movement will reminisce on the days when he was solely ours. Back to hard-scrabbled days in Iowa (or, in my case, frigid days spent in Massachusetts and Rhode Island); when without context, those separated from the realities of present questioned the reality of his very endeavor.
Fellow travelers; as a twenty-six year-old Democrat, for the first time in my life, at this point in a national campaign, I am satisfied.
Barack Obama is not my candidate. He is not your candidate. He is our candidate.
He is America's candidate.
I look forward to a long day on my feet in the Washington Mall on a late January morning following the dawn of a new year, which gave birth to a new era.
BUT
It will still take work.
So...
Donate. Volunteer. Let's Do This!