Addressing a massive crowd of more than 85,000 cheering supporters at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, the first-term Illinois senator ...Okay, now I really am going to bed ...
Obama, who has been cast as aloof and elitist by McCain,
The McCain campaign quickly responded to the address by saying Obama had distorted the country about his own record.
“When the temple comes down, the fireworks end and the words are over, the facts remain: Senator Obama still has no record of bipartisanship, still opposes offshore drilling, still voted to raise taxes on those making just $42,000 per year, and still voted against funds for American troops in harm’s way. The fact remains: Barack Obama is still not ready to be president,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.
Obama also lashed out ...
Often accused of being too vague and lofty in his rhetoric ...
The Republican war room monitoring the convention offered up several barbs to make fun of the production ...
The convention was marked by some tensions between his campaign and supporters of vanquished rival Hillary Clinton ...
I understand it was signed Barack Obama. It was a genuinely outstanding speech. It was magnificent. It is the finest ... I saw Cuomo's speech. I saw Kennedy in 80. I even saw Douglas MacArthur. I even saw Martin Luther King. This is the greatest convention speech. Probably the most important because unlike Cuomo and the others, this is an acceptance speech. This came out of the heart of American and he went right at the heart of America. This wasn't a liberal speech at all. This is a deeply, deeply centrist speech. It had wit. It had humor. And when he used the needle on McCain, he stuck it into McCain, and it was funny as with Kennedy's speech in 80. I laughed with Kennedy when he was needling Ronald Reagan. It was so good. Let me read you the passage, though, because this man is a professional orator and he's a writer of his own speeches.posted by edgeways at 10:39 PM on August 28, 2008
But let me read it because this is where you get into the roll and the cadence and how a speaker can really pound a point home.
I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America -- they have served the United States of America.
That is how you bring people off their feet, by pulling at their heart and guts. It was beautiful.
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination...my eyes leaked a bit.
And if America is to be a great nation this must come true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.The reason why Obama will win the presidency is not because America is ready for a black man to lead her. It's not because we have somehow overcome, or are ready to declare that we have overcome our sordid racist past. It is because Dr. King recognized that the fundamental equality of all men and women was woven into the fabric of our nation and that the struggles of black folks were the test of that fabric's integrity. Today, that test is different. It's more profound and more complex. It's economic and it's religious. It has to do with the power this generation wields over the next and the power this nation holds over other peoples. Obama realizes Dr. King's promise when he gestures beyond race at that harder and more basic hope.
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.
But not only that--let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Also ... wtf was that country song after the speech? Seriously.According to David Gregory on MSNBC, it was the same song that George W. Bush used to close all of his election rallies.
I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.In which he explains succintly what the part of the Reps game has been at least since 2001, which is fearmongering. In a parallel, Mr Berlusconi took inspiration by Joseph Raymond McCarthy , depicting the "commuist threat" as cause of most of Italian problems and he is still going on, relentless, with the same tired lines with minor variations, providing a target outlet for any kind outrage to vent on, stopping short of rounding all the "communist".
You make a big election about small things.Which explains audience what's going on and stops short of making people feel like fools, while suggesting that they have been exploited. And the change starts from Obama telling them what the music has been in past and will be in the future, more of the same.
And you know what - it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.
I ask a woman named Melanie Threatt why she thinks her life would improve under an Obama presidency. "It just will," she says. When I press her for specifics, she says, "I just think doors are going to open." You hear stuff like this a lot on Planet Obama, and it makes you wonder just what it is you're encountering.My wild-assed guess: because people are understanding that they have a role to play in making America great. It's that community organizing thing: when everyone pulls together in the same direction, great things happen.
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posted by Avenger at 9:49 PM on August 28, 2008 [8 favorites]