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We have been living for nearly eight years now through the national nightmare of the Bush-Cheney presidency, a gang of silk-tied thugs who came into office through an illegitimate seizure of the presidency and have used its powers to trample the Constitution, spit on the Bill of Rights, wreak economic class war on behalf of a rich and powerful oligarchy against everybody else, turn our national treasury and resources over to the oligarchs’ private uses, scorn the rule of law, subject the tools of government to the pursuit of permanent despotic one-party rule, destroy the dreams and lives of thousands of young Americans through foreign war based on blatant and deliberate lies to the nation, unleash agony and destruction upon hundreds of thousands of human beings for no crime other than being Iraqi, and tax our children and their children with endless piles of national debt in the illegal pursuit of foreign empire.
As I stood in the voting booth on the first day of early voting, I thought about Jackie Robinson and what he must have put up with in this country that still had so much cruel race hatred as he broke the Major League Baseball color barrier.
I thought about the incredible personal courage of Barack Obama, to subject himself and his family to the ugly hatred that he absolutely knew he would face, but to do it anyway because he believes in this country, this democracy, and its vision, and passionately believes he can help the country and the vision repair themselves after the years of nightmare.
I thought about the stark contrast of the choice America’s voters face in this election, between fear and hope, between disrespect and respect, between superstition and reason, between hate and compassion, between bombs and diplomacy, between the Greedy Society and the Great Society.
I thought about the fact that Barack Obama calls his two daughters from the campaign trail almost every night. I do the same thing with my similarly aged daughters every night too, no matter where I am. This point reverberates with me in a special way I can hardly explain.
I thought about how this courageous young senator, father, husband and nominee, who isn’t a perfect nominee and won’t be a perfect president, at least has the audacity to say we can be better than we have been, and at least has the faith in all of us to believe that we can overcome the bitterness and hatred and divisions, and that we can get this country back on the right track.
I thought about how I want my children to have a better world, a world of more compassion and less hate, a world of more sharing and less greed, a world of more democracy and less tyranny, a world of more humility and less arrogance, a world of more Constitutionalism and less power-lust, a world of more friendship and less bitterness – and how the right choice in this election just might result in some progress toward these things.
I thought about millions of Americans rising up through the awesome power of the ballot to reclaim their country, to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH, to say NO MORE, to tell the world that we in America want to have a united country instead of one divided by bitterness and suspicion, and to get this country back on the path of movement toward the powerful vision set forth in our Declaration of Independence as a nation.
And so with joy in my heart I then added my voice to that rising with the casting of my vote.
As you read this, there are still a day and hours left before the election is over and the votes are counted. The election is going to be very close. The purveyors of hate and bitterness are pulling out all the stops to trick good Americans into giving up their precious votes to the hustlers and robber barons once again. The silk-tied gangsters and their cronies are arrayed in full force to hack the vote counts and overthrow democracy again. We have much to overcome.
Our challenge today is this: to spend every minute that we have available between this moment and the closing of the polls on Tuesday night to turn out the vote for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the supporting Democratic ticket; for ourselves, for our posterity, for our descendants, for our Constitution, for our national vision, for our continuing American Revolution, for everything we dream and care about; every minute that we have available, there is not a minute to waste, make every minute count, get those votes out, there is no time for worrying about poll numbers, there is no time for fear, there is no time for complacency, there is no time but now and we must use the time.
This may be our last chance to restore America to the America we love. We have to make it count. Thank you for your attention and thank you for being a citizen and a voter in this greatest of human experiments. Good luck to us all.
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