Meaning of Obama Election

These are the remarks as I prepared them to deliver to the Election Night Victory Celebration of the Tulare County (California) Democratic Party. There were over 700 in attendance at the Visalia Holiday Inn.

This is a great night to be a Democrat; this is a great night to be an American! On January 20, 2009 Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. We are also sending bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to help him get this country back on track again. It’s about time! Thanks to your hard work we have taken our country back. You registered the voters, you made the phone calls, attended the rallies, you contributed your money, talked to your family, friends and neighbors, painted the signs, stayed informed, cast your vote: in short you made it happen. You have proven what Barack has been saying all along: This campaign has never really been about him. It is about us, the American people, what we need, and what we are willing to believe in and make happen.

The smashing victory we see tonight confirms what we have been saying since the beginning of this campaign: This country is ready for change! And starting on January 20, we are going to get it. America’s eight-year nightmare is over. We have seen a vindication of the basis of our party’s campaign. As Barack Obama says, the size of our problems had outgrown the smallness of our politics, the politics about tearing each other down instead of building our country up. It is time to once again become one America, not a Red America and a Blue America, but one United States of America. With this election tonight we have chosen hope over fear, unity over division, change over the status quo and a bright future over the failed past.

We will now see the beginning of the end of our involvement in a war that should never have been fought, while we finally go after the people who actually attacked us. We will see health care treated as a human right and not as a privilege. We will live up to our ideals and our sacred constitutional principles: Let it never ever be said again that America’s government tortures people and spies on its citizens without cause or a warrant; those are not the practices of a free country.

We will see people treated equally and with respect, whether they be black, white, brown, Native American, immigrant, gay, straight, disabled or not disabled. We will build up our schools and our infrastructure; we will break our dependence on oil, not by trying to squeeze the last few drops out of our shores but by turning to the wind and the sun. In the process we will begin reversing global warming and handing a cleaner planet over to our children. We will mobilize our young people and invest in our human capital by rewarding service with a college education.

These are but some of the ideas and ideals to which we have committed ourselves. Our triumph tonight grew out of an improbable movement that turned cynicism into optimism and the spirit of business as usual and “no you can’t” into “yes we can.” Our party always rises when it appeals to our hopes and not our fears, to our better angels and the promise of the possible. This is the spirit that understands that obstacles are what we see when we take our eyes off the prize, the spirit that Bobby Kennedy referred to when he said, “Some see things as they are and ask why, I see things that never were and ask why not.” So tonight we begin day one of seeing things that never were but ought to be, that are for some and ought to be for all, that could be and that will be. This is our night, and it is America’s to celebrate.