Barack Obama, you had me at 'Yes, we can change"

Obama speech: 'Yes, we can change' - CNN.com

I didn't hear the speech, I read it and now I wish I had heard it first.  This was a great American speech.  I hope that twenty years from now, they'll teach this speech.  But that's not what this is about. 

This is about how Barack Obama got me to believe him.  I'm willing to suspend disbelief because he really appears to be the real deal.  A more or less pragmatic Progressive.  I don't expect him to be ideologically pure.  I expect that there are places that folks can make many mountains out of molehills.  I'm sure that all manner of swiftboating will take place.  Yet, I think this man can be the next President of the United States. 

We're up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner. It's the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea, even if it's one you never agreed with.

That's the kind of politics that is bad for our party, it is bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.

We're up against the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. But we know that this is exactly what's wrong with our politics. This is why people don't believe what their leaders say anymore. This is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.

But let me say this, South Carolina. What we've seen in these last weeks is that we're also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign, but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation.

It's the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us, the assumption that young people are apathetic, the assumption that Republicans won't cross over, the assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor and that the poor don't vote, the assumption that African-Americans can't support the white candidate, whites can't support the African-American candidate, blacks and Latinos cannot come together.

We are here tonight to say that that is not the America we believe in.

That took me over the edge.  This cuts to the core of what has been wrong in this country for most of my adult life. As much as it pains me to cut Clinton out of this picture, but I think that the smart ticket is Obama-Edwards (poor John, always the Veep candidate).  I think that Clinton anywhere on the ticket is too much of a lightning rod and 'd like my son to live some part of his life in a world where a Bush or Clinton wasn't in the Executive, so far his entire twenty-one years has been spent with either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.  None of which is to say that if she's the nominee I won't support her. 

This is a politics of hope.  A belief that the American people, while not always the sharpest knives in the drawer, can break out of being sheeple when the chips are down.  The country is in a mess, no question about that.  We let conservative ideas dominate the available dialog of solutions for a generation, that didn't work out so great.  There's a space open in the body politic, I hope, for us to turn away from the brink and bring a more compassionate sanity to our politics. 

Read the speech.  It's really quite amazing.

Cheers

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