DNC Day 4: The Obama speech

After soaking in the excitement of the Al Gore speech, I was primed and ready to see Senator Obama take the stage. Over the loudspeakers "Power to the People" blasted and the masses started to dance, again. As a curveball for the final day of a convention, five citizens would come up to tell their story. Most of them were former Republicans. All of them were from swing states. The issues varied from speaker to speaker as they each took a couple of minutes to tell their personal story to an audience 80,000 strong.

Perhaps the speaker in that group who stuck with me was a fellow from Indiana named Barney Smith. Barney had lost his job, his health care, and his pension due to his factory shuttering and heading overseas. Mr. Smith admitted that he had voted for George W. Bush on both occasions, which brought gasps of horror from the crowd. Barney seemed to be headed nowhere, until he fired off "I want a White House that works for Barney Smith not Smith Barney." The crowd roared with approval. My French neighbors leaned on me for cultural translation. I yelled to them "Wall Street", and they quickly began to mark on their notepads.

Dick Durbin of Illinois warmed up the stage for his fellow land of Lincolner. When Obama finally took the stage, the crowd rumbled down front at first. Those on the floor at the proper angle could see him come out on to the stage well before the rest. After the brief rumble the stadium erupted as loud as any Bronco Sunday it had seen in its brief existence. Chants of "yes we can", and "o-bam-a, o-bam-a" broke out spontaneously in each corner, none of them in congruence with the other cheers. The sheer joy and excitement of the crowd was electrifying.

Senator Brack Obama allowed the crowd to roar for a while and then began his speech with a tip of the hat to Howard Dean and Dick Durbin. Then much to the delight of the crowd, he accepted the nomination for the presidency of the United States. Again the crowd roared as if a Bronco touchdown had been scored. A master of prose and delivery, Obama electrified the crowd for a good half hour. There were several moments that stood above the rest.

The first powerful moment arrived early in the Obama speech. In this segment he articulates the pain we Americans feel in watching our fellow citizens suffer under our current economic system. He then punctuates with a call of "Enough!"

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to the family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government who lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty, that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Tonight I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land, ENOUGH! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week in Minnesota, the same party that brought you the two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say, "EIGHT IS ENOUGH."

He then clobbers McCain with a reference to his 90% voting record with Bush administration by asking who wants to take a 10% chance on change. The next big segment begins shortly after where he attacks the Republican mantra of supply side economics today called the "ownership society."

For over two decades, he subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those who have the most and hope prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you are on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. You are on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You are on your own.

Well it is time for them to OWN their failure. It's time for us to change America.

You see we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.

Perhaps the best line of the night was saved for McCain's statement that he will follow Osama Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell.

For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

As Obama closed the speech, fireworks went of in a giant burst symbiotic with the crowd in attendance. People were grabbing signs and confetti, just to have anything from this speech as a memoir. I know my heart did not stop racing for hours. I could of taken on a bear that night, or at least an elephant.