On Saturday night in Iowa, at a fabled event called the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, with six Democratic Presidential candidates giving speeches, Obama got his best reviews since his big splash at the 2004 Democratic Convention, i.e. MyDD.com:
What I liked most about it was that Obama finally seemed to find the right balance between being a unity candidate, someone who can bring both parties together, and throwing anti-Republican red meat to the base while at the same time actually expressing pride in being a Democrat. Last night, Obama may have given his very first Democratic primary speech of the campaign. About time, Senator...Andrew Sullivan has a collection of raves.
If you 're really interested, you can watch the whole 20:49 here. Big winning drive:
Our moment is now!
I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit red America against blue America. I want to be the President of the United States of America.
And if those Republicans come at me with the same fear-mongering and swift-boating that they usually do, then I will take them head-on. Because I believe the American people are tired of fear, and tired of distractions…we can make this election not about fear, but about the future, and that will not be just a Democratic victory, that will be an American victory, a victory that America needs right now!
Legitimately stirring stuff. If Obama really has a chance to win the nomination, I may have to rethink my current voting plan...
1 comment:
Thought the reviews were overblown. I saw the speech, liked it, but didn't feel like jumping out of my seat and cheering. My guess is we'll see a blizzard of articles about how Hillary sucked and Obama was the reincarnation of FDR/JFK/Lincoln, etc. We'll see if any of this actually helps Obama.
From a more nuts and bolts perspective: As you prob know, the Iowa caucuses are a strange event created precisely to engender all sorts of arm-twisting, deal-making, vote sharing, etc (think: "Survivor: Iowa"), and it more resembles a highschool riot than than anything you'd consider actual "democracy".
The structure of it is *exactly* designed to enable everyone to gang up on the frontrunner and you can expect all the guys to gang together, like the peasants chasing down Frankenstein, to burn HRC. With Obama (pre-JJ speech) sinking like a stone, I thought there was a possibility of he & Edwards forming some kind of permanent alliance (like announcing an Edwards-Obama ticket), but now I doubt it. We'll see. One thing you can be sure of: Unless HRC gets 100% of the votes, the emerging media narrative will be that she's been gravely wounded and it's now a horse race again.
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