http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY
I got home tonight and came across this strange and riveting music video -- it made the tears well up, and I've been watching presidential elections since 1960 and thought nothing could do that anymore. This video represents the way a new political generation is feeling about Obama's candidacy. This isn't artificial, it is real in the hearts of those who are drawn to who he is and what he represents. Even people who are apolitical, who haven't followed the Bush disasters in all their fine print feel on some level, I believe, that something has gone terribly wrong with how we are governed. But many people's grave misgivings have been largely suppressed, or are inarticulate. Yet people yearn now for some proportionate catharsis, in a democratic way. Hillary Clinton, much less John McCain, are ambassadors from the past, and they can't give it.
Enter Barack Obama, who embodies it. He's a categorical discontinuity with the past. Just electing him would cross a watershed line in our politics. No party establishment has embraced him. He hasn't punched his ticket and lined up the usual suspects behind him. Nobody owns him, and nobody owes him. Obama says: It's your country, it's your government, and so it's your power. Use it. Do it now. Yes, you can.
There has been no major American political figure who has been able to summon people's hope like this since Franklin Roosevelt. We cannot miss this opportunity. There is the potential here, through this man's candidacy, for not only a victory and a mandate of historic size, but also for a new relationship between the people and their government. That's what is summoning us...
posted 02/03/2008 at 01:31:40
Enter Barack Obama, who embodies it. He's a categorical discontinuity with the past. Just electing him would cross a watershed line in our politics. No party establishment has embraced him. He hasn't punched his ticket and lined up the usual suspects behind him. Nobody owns him, and nobody owes him. Obama says: It's your country, it's your government, and so it's your power. Use it. Do it now. Yes, you can.
There has been no major American political figure who has been able to summon people's hope like this since Franklin Roosevelt. We cannot miss this opportunity. There is the potential here, through this man's candidacy, for not only a victory and a mandate of historic size, but also for a new relationship between the people and their government. That's what is summoning us...
posted 02/03/2008 at 01:31:40
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