Hi there. You know me, I’m Pete Daniels. The guy who wrote this. Today I’m going to write something a little different.
Last night I (of all people) was in downtown St. Paul, at the Minnesota DFL election day party. Now one thing you have to understand here is that the last time I was in downtown St. Paul I was assaulted and gassed and brutalized by the police state at the Republican National Convention. That was only two months ago, and my feelings about it are still fairly raw. Going back to St. Paul was slightly weird for me.
After Obama’s victory speech last night a few of us who were there went down to the place we were attacked on Labor Day. It was… an emotional experience for me, one that I’m not even going to try to convey here. No offense, but you just wouldn’t get it.
The whole night was incredible, and needless to say it was a hell of a party. I firmly expected a Democratic victory and I didn’t think it would be close, but holy shit. As Nancy Pelosi said in her press conference early in the evening, it would be “a wave upon a wave.” Fifteen seats in the House, four or five in the Senate. The rejection of the South Dakota abortion bill. And state after state, a wave upon a wave for Barack Obama. As we were getting ready to leave for the party last night ABC called Pennsylvania for Obama, and I looked to the person I was with and said “It’s over. This is what you’re going to see for the rest of the night.” And damned if it wasn’t.
Last night in St. Paul grown men wept and people danced on Kellougg Boulevard. Strangers embraced, children stared, and everyone got totally hammered. A few blocks away, two Americans (who by the way, love each other very much) stood on a street corner and watched the lights reflecting off the river and listened to history happening above us, and in a small way took back the spirit of our city from a great darkness.
Do I sound like I drank the Kool Aid? I did not. I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I wouldn’t vote for Obama, and I did not. I said in the post I linked to above that Barack Obama was “not the change we need,” and I stand by that. We’re in deep shit. America’s on the ropes and the world’s on the brink. We have serious problems and we need serious solutions, and no one man is going to magically fix things, and to project that sort of expectation on anyone instead of taking responsibility for our own lives and our kids’ futures is childish. Grow up. No one man can be “the change we need.”
We are the change we need. We have to be, or we’re finished. But even if Barack Obama getting elected President isn’t the change we need, it may very well be the chance we get.
Let none of that diminish the fact that we saw history last night. In twenty years, you’ll remember where you were.
-p.
For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education. There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.
But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand…
This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.
It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other…
In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.
…Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
