TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Obama's Historic Speech: The Full Text
With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.
Orange reaction - and the crowd goes wild...
Daily Kos: Text of Obama's Acceptance Speech
Update by brownsox: I have never seen Barack Obama give a better speech. I have never seen anyone give a better political speech. Update by MissLaura: A friend reports that CNN didn't even break in over the crowd shots at the ending immediately as would be normal practice. That's a sign something extraordinary happened.
Update by brownsox: I have never seen Barack Obama give a better speech. I have never seen anyone give a better political speech.
Update by MissLaura: A friend reports that CNN didn't even break in over the crowd shots at the ending immediately as would be normal practice. That's a sign something extraordinary happened.
BBC reader reactions (perhaps with some freeping?)
BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Obama speech: Your views
What an inspiring speech! It as a speech of hope. America is suffering under the yoke of the Bush Admin. It will be a great day for not only America but the world, when he takes the oath of office. Mr Vassmer
What an inspiring speech! It as a speech of hope. America is suffering under the yoke of the Bush Admin. It will be a great day for not only America but the world, when he takes the oath of office.
Mr Vassmer
Empty rhetoric...how many times will people honestly believe he will "break US dependence on foreign oil", "Unite the country", "Save Social Security"...etc, he never actually says how he plans to accomplish those goals. How is he going to afford everything he's promising?Obama and many of his more cult like supporters are going to have a rude awakening when they discover that not everybody is going to become leftist liberals because he talks about "change". Mike Cuz, Sacramento, United States
Mike Cuz, Sacramento, United States
His energy policy left me bland. He did say that drilling was just a temporary measure, and that there would be vast support for renewables. But he also said he supports an increase of safe nuclear power. Safe nuclear power is not going to happen in a nation with grandma peace activists on no-fly lists. His comments on Georgia indicate he does seem to have learned that he'd best moderate his comments about Russia, which he'll have to mouth until he gets the win, because it will be such a central part of McCain's campaign shit.
I won't have any problem voting for him, but like many national votes in amurka, it will be with the eyes of reality open.
What impressed me the most was his life's path, and how he worked that into who he is as a politician. Amurka could do far worse than this (first African-American) President of the Harvard Law Review, who achieved that pulling himself up from relative poverty. That's far more encouraging than anything currently on the horizon, or from the past post-Carter decades.
I expect his triangulation comes a bit more from the heart than that of the Clinton dynasty, and this will be a strong plus. That he will have to govern during the end of empire and financial meltdown will be very, very hard. But there's probably no one better equipped on the current scene.
(I wish Gore hadn't been fast on his points, as he gave a very detailed policy speech leading up to Obama. It wasn't as effective as possible, but perhaps as necessary.) "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
E.g. He followed up a promise to reduce dependency on foreign oil with a nice story about cars for everyone! Built in the US! For everyone! Not so much about making travel and city design saner and - oh dear - maybe even more European.
Also - clean coal? What is clean coal?
Considering the rest was all dare-to-dream, I thought the dreams weren't all that daring. And the foreign policy lines were downright scary and hawkish. He's smart enough to make negotiations with Putin, er, Medvedev, far more interesting than the clown show the Bush team have turned them into, but he also sounds too ideologically blinkered and too much of an exceptionalist to be good at effective realpolitik.
Still he is who he is, and while he's not Mr Aggressive Progressive, he's moving in a better direction.
The real enemy from now on won't be McCain, it's going to be the various corporate machines and their Washington puppets, who are going to be trying very hard to push the policy agenda back towards the right, even after a likely Dem win.
But I'm not sure if Migeru wanted to put that as a plus. If lying wouldn't be more effective in a campaign than telling the truth, anybody who cuts taxes, would have to explain, where to cut expenditures, too. Of course McCain's proposals are complete fantasy without any connection to reality, but when Obama doesn't want to cut military spending, and this is difficult, when he wants to escalate Afghanistan, he needs more tax income.
Some coal is cleaned at the source, before it's burned, as when a mountain top is cleanly stripped of its top. The part that is not cleaned is washed down into former stream beds, where the gentle water that used to flow there purifies the silt into paradisical farm lands where even farmer's wives in gingham dresses can grow gardens of organic coal potatoes.
What little dirt remains on washed coal is then burned, with some leaking into the atmosphere. But it does not damage, as it is heavier than air, and falls down either in the northeastern forests and lakes, or in the chasms of the Grand Canyon, so it doesn't affect people directly (except for the ones who continue to breathe.)
Clean coal also protects people from being overly stunned by the beauty of the Grand Canyon, as they don't have to be awed by a view of the other side anymore.
Go Barack "Energy is My Middle Name" Obama! "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Especially as the delivery went during the portions on Iraq. A key difference between Kerry and Obama that I picked up on was that Kerry had to continuously insist that he was strong enough to be president. It came across as whiny and weak for Kerry. Obama went straight at it, and the delivery allowed him to assume away McCain's bullshit narrative ("Of course he's wrong and I'm right, you asshats").
That's where being a good orator matters.
He framed the election very well, and the funny thing is it turns out that the one person in Denver who knew how to hit McCain in a solid way turned out to be...Obama.
I liked the economics portions, especially hitting the Reps on supply-side economics and their Protestant work ethic horseshit:
For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. 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're on your own.
Certainly it could have been a better speech. But I think it probably won him some votes. On the whole, I think we got out of this convention more than what we needed to get out of it. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
