'A Change is Gonna Come' posted by KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL on 05/06/2008 @ 9:55pm
American Idol finalist Syesha Mercado had just finished singing Sam Cooke's 1964 classic "A Change is Gonna Come" when Obama strode onto the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Syesha wept, as she reminded Randy, Paula and Simon of the civil rights movement which fueled Cooke's song, life and power.
Obama spoke of the change that was coming --the attacks, the rightwing playbook, and he worked to inoculate himself with power, passion, and words that soared.
Obama, tonight, gave a definitional speech. Some considered it a convention acceptance speech.
It was a redefinition of the American Dream.
A Change is Gonna Come.
Let me tell you who I am, Obama told us, reintroducing himself after a rough and rocky week. Let me tell you what makes me tick.
He spoke of his love for America, challenging those who would define patriotism through lapel pins.
Obama spoke of the movements and government which gave his grandfather the opportunity to go to college on the GI bill when he came home from war; which gave his mother,who was on food stamps, the opportunity to send him to the best schools; which gave his father-in- law, a shift worker with MS, the opportunity to send his daughter and son to one of the best colleges in the nation.
Obama spoke of dignity and work and the America he loves. He spoke of the America that isn't about game playing or slicing and dicing and name calling or spin and division and distraction; he spoke of an America defined by change from people, from below--and a Washington and Wall Street out of touch with core values.
"Let's end the slicing and dicing into brown, black, old, young, rich, poor," Obama said.
A Change is Gonna Come.
Obama spoke of trusting the American people to realize we need a government which stands up for families tricked out of their homes . He spoke of compassion and security as American values, not liberal or conservative values.
"Michelle and I have lived the promise of America," Obama told the North Carolina crowd, the country --and the superdelegates. "We have lived the founding ideals of the flag draped over my father's coffin...and I have learned the simple truth which I learned in shadows of shuttered factories in south side of Chicago.."
We can bring about the change we seek.
Yes, we can.
Okay, I worry that Obama closed with words better suited to the pulpit --than the pavements he needs to hit hard as he works to drive home a tougher economic message ...one that will combine truthtelling and populism... as he heads back onto the road to the change that is gonna come and the fights ahead.
But tonight Barack Obama spoke of a new definition of the American dream, of patriotism and of a country that is at a defining moment, a country and a people which deserve better than the distraction and divisiveness of a rightwing mass media determined to peddle manufactured scandals and trivialize and divide --and a Clinton campaign which has pushed a kind of rightwing populism which risks sundering the Democratic coalition needed to win this November against John McCain (who may be loved by the mass corporate media but is neither reformer nor moderate.)
As CNN's and MSNBC's commentators punditocrasize about moving ahead and the DNC's Rules committee meeting this May 31st and seating Michigan and Florida's delegates, I thought of that worn but good Clinton saying: People who work hard and play by the rules can get ahead.
But as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson reminded us a couple weeks ago, the Clinton campaign has moved the goalposts so often -- when it comes to what matters on these pendulum-like primary nights -- they're not even in the stadium anymore. They're somewhere out in the parking lot.
A change is gonna come.