Here in NYC the excitement is building to this incredible milestone in the country's history... 2008 will be remembered as a year a mighty great nail was driven into the coffin of the Old Boys Club. Seems like a truly AMAZING victory speech will be required for such a moment, and it strikes me... This is a Lincolnesque moment, so I think Barack could do worse than to reach back to Lincoln's great speech.
Here's a rough draft:
Thoughts?
Seven score and seven years ago, America went to war with itself. Our fathers and mothers had conceived this great nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Whether our great civil war — the test whether our nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can endure — is finally over, history will judge. But a great battle is won today. I dedicate this night to all those who gave their lives that our nation might truly live. I dedicate this night to the millions of activists, volunteers and voters who believed. You know now beyond any doubt: Yes we can.
But do not consecrate this night; and do not consecrate me, your new President. The brave men and women who died in our War for Independence and in our Civil War; the marchers for equal rights and civil rights who did not live to see their dream deferred become reality; the union leaders and community organizers who fight to this day to achieve justice for the common man: they have consecrated this night, far above our poor power to add or detract. And the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what you, my country, did tonight.
It is for us, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which our fathers and mothers have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining—that from this extraordinary night we take increased devotion to that cause for which so many have given the last full measure of devotion. We here highly resolve that the dead of our long great struggle for liberty shall not have died in vain; that the men and women who march ever onward in the epic struggle for equality before God do not march in vain; that this nation, under God, shall indeed have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Yes we can. Yes we do. Yes we will.