One America

Today two Presidential campaigns came full circle, each finding in the other a piece of their core message.  Since 2004, both Barack Obama and John Edwards have been talking about One America on the national stage -- in different and complimentary ways.

It seems entirely fitting, then, to see them together on the stage tonight, talking about the goal they share.  One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In 2004 I voted for Edwards.  In 2008 I voted for Obama.  I am happy to see them campaign together for the change we need this November.  One America just got a little bit closer.    

John Edwards deserves credit for placing an anti-poverty agenda front and center in his campaign for the Presidency.   While much has been made of a certain 2004 Democratic Convention speech, there was another important speech from that event.  After talking about the problem of "two Americas" - one for the privileged and one for everyone else, where families who work hard must struggle with wages that don't make ends meet, inadequate schools, where poverty and hunger are realities for two many Americans, John Edwards tells us it can be different.  We can have One America:

It doesn't have to be that way.

We can strengthen and lift up your families. Your agenda is our agenda.

So let me give you some specifics.

First, we can create good-paying jobs in this country again. We're going to get rid of tax cuts for companies who are outsourcing your jobs and, instead, we're going to give tax breaks to American companies that are keeping jobs right here in America.

And we will invest in the jobs of the future and in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition. And we're going to do this because John and I understand that a job is about more than a paycheck; it's about dignity and self- respect.

Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth.

We don't want people to just get by; we want people to get ahead.

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And that's what we're going to do -- that's what we're going to do when John is in the White House, because we're going to raise the minimum wage, we're going to finish the job on welfare reform, and we're going to bring good-paying jobs to the places where we need them the most.

And by doing all those things, we're going to say no forever to any American working full-time and living in poverty. Not in our America, not in our America, not in our America.

And as we know, he has continued this theme over the years since his run in 2004, and made it a centerpiece of his 2008 campaign.

Barack Obama has also made "One America" his core message - from his 2004 Convention speech to his remarks throughout the 2008 campaign.  In December I wrote about Obama for America as a new way of framing progressive values through the lens of one America:

. . . what is unusual about Obama's speeches is how much they are about what it means to be an American.  In his words, Americans are united by a common destiny and a common set of values.  Remember the red states and the blue states?

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.  Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.  We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
(APPLAUSE)
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

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On the campaign trail, as I diared this fall, his 2004 Convention speech has "grown up".  Now he talks more broadly about how to be American means to be a compassionate, justice-seeking people, and a creative, active and powerful force for progressive change.  Here's my notes on that speech:

It is "time to find our stake in each other" and "reach out for a common destiny.  The American people are "ready for sacrifice. . . honesty and integrity" . . . . "I will ask you to be involved in your democracy again" and this is a difficult challenge. . . . The idea that I am my brother's keeper/I am my sister's keeper "must express itself through our government." . . . "We are here to transform our nation". . . ."We can be the last best hope again"

Here Obama makes a powerful call to reclaim activist government ("I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper").  It echoes his earlier theme of unity, but again we are united as a nation behind progressive values.  It suggests that as we have strayed from these values, we have strayed from American ideals, but that we can, and should reclaim them.  ("We can be the last best hope again.")

In other words, Obama's vision of One America is an America united by shared values - that to be American means to stand together for a "common destiny" that is unambiguously progressive.

So what does it mean, to bring these two accounts of One America together?   My hope is that it represents a truly "people-powered" populism.  This is a theme that has been present for Obama, but often lost in the larger narratives that get play from the media.

In his widely acclaimed speech on race in Philadelphia, Obama again talked about shared American values, in the context of a history of racial oppression married with a longstanding Constitutional promise of equality.  From the very title "A More Perfect Union," Obama brings up the theme of One America, how we are failing our commitment to a true Union, but how we can reach for it all the same.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this presidential campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

After talking about how the history of segregation and discrimination has compromised the promise of equality for African Americans in the United States, and often resulted in unequal access to schools, housing, jobs, safe neighborhoods, he explains how two Americas exist in terms of class, and not just race:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

And then he issues a call for all of us to understand how our struggle is truly a shared one - that rising income inequality, where whole groups of people are excluded from economic progress, is as much a violation of what America stands for as racism is:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care and better schools and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans: the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And I know this is a value John Edwards shares too - he has understood the need for us to stand as One America not divided by racism:

Let me talk about -- let me talk about why we need to build one America.

Because I, like many of you, I saw up close what having two Americas can do to our country.

From the time I was very young, I saw the ugly face of segregation and discrimination. I saw young, African-American kids being sent upstairs in movie theaters.

I saw "white only" signs on restaurant doors and luncheon counters.

I feel such an enormous personal responsibility when it comes to issues of race and equality and civil rights.

And I've heard some discussions and debates around America about where and in front of what audiences we ought to talk about race and equality and civil rights. I have an answer to that questions: Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

This is not an African-American issue. This is not a Latino issue. This is not an Asian-American issue. This is an American issue.

It is about who we are, what our values are and what kind of country we live in.

Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

The truth is, the truth is that what John and I want, what all of us want if for our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations that grown up in an America that's no longer divided by race. We must build one America.

Obama's campaign from the beginning has been about empowering us to make change.  Thus his vision of populism is that it must be driven by us, banding together to take action.  By joining his vision with John Edwards' message of One America I believe Obama can go farther, do more and sharpen his critique of how many Americans are being left behind as jobs go overseas, as the mortgage meltdown deepens, and as American public schools struggle to deliver the education we need for the 21st century.  Edwards can also, I hope, get more and better attention to his critical agenda.  These two powerful voices will be even more powerful joined together.

One America.  Now that's change I can believe in.  Especially with these two extraordinary leaders behind it.