To all of you fellow Deaniacs, this is also a triumphant day for the Dean Wing of the Democratic Party.
Dean gave us a glimpse of what's possible. He showed that you could protest the war, galvanize a grassroots movement and fund a campaign of the people, by the people and for the people.
My heroes have been vindicated today.
Sen. Barack Obama, the greatest political inspiration of a generation and Dr. Howard Dean, a man before his time, whose time has come on Nov. 4 2008.
I dropped my absentee ballot in the mailbox today and certified another high point in the long journey to make Sen. Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States of America.
These are the final grueling weeks leading to the election of our lifetime. Tonight I just pledged a $100 matching gift and added this note for my potential matcher:
"This is a gift to the person matching my gift and our gift is a gift to our country and our world that sends this message: we deeply and sincerely hope for something better; for lasting peace; for shared prosperity; for justice; and an intelligent, engaged empathy for each other in a moment of great uncertainty. We are finally in the home stretch. We are on the brink of great possibilities. Peace."
We've come a long way from that night in 2004 when we first met the skinny kid with a funny name.
Now is his time. Now is our time.
To all my fellow Obamacrats who have been there from 2004, to his announcement on a chilly day in Illinois to run for President, to Iowa, on January 3rd, the day they said would never come, to New Hampshire, when he delivered the concession speech that was heard 'round the world and became an anthem called "Yes We Can," to the acrimony in Nevada, to the triumph in South Carolina, the tie on Super Tuesday, to 11-straight victorious caucuses, the unprecedented crowds, unprecedented fundraising and unprecedented ground game, thank you, thank you, thank you for your commitment, your time, your money and your sense of history.
I am grateful to be alive, in this moment, on this journey with you. Yes we can and yes we did.
For eight years, we've watched the rise of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter and the lowering of public discourse. We've watched a major city drown and bridges collapse and the dollar sink, while hard core ideologues cling to the Right Wing cult. It really must stop for the sake of our country and our place in the world. We gave unchecked trickle down conservatism a free rein in this country for far too long. Now we are on the brink of a breakdown or a breakthrough come November 4. The country has to stand up and fight back. We can't appease or accommodate the mindset that got us here anymore. After eight years of disaster they still don't get it. Come Nov. 5 they still may not get it but a new day is here and we're not looking back.
We the People get it. At long last, a change is gonna come.
On the trail we often heard Sen. Obama say that he was going to shut down Guantanomo and restore habeus corpus.
What is habeus corpus?:
"The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws. Habeas corpus is roughly Latin for "hold the body," and is used in law to mean that a government must either charge a person with a crime and allow them due process, or let them go free."http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0212-24.htm
