The poetics and the politics

And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself.

All of us (are) driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do - that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be... It’s what (Barack) did all those years ago, on the streets of Chicago, setting up job training to get people back to work and afterschool programs to keep kids safe. It’s what he did in the Illinois Senate, moving people from welfare to jobs, passing tax cuts for hard working families, and making sure women get equal pay for equal work.

HILLARY CLINTON

If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going.If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.

But we don’t need four more years of the last eight years. More economic stagnation and less affordable health care. More high gas prices and less alternative energy. The Supreme Court in a right-wing headlock and our Government in partisan gridlock. The biggest deficit in our nation’s history.

Money borrowed from the Chinese to buy Oil from the Saudis. Putin and Georgia, Iraq and Iran.

JOE BIDEN

For every American who is trying to do the right thing, for all those people in government who are honouring their pledge to uphold the law and respect our Constitution, no longer will the eight most dreaded words in the English language be: “The vice president’s office is on the phone.”

In the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time. When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that’s not change; that’s more of the same. He voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. For people who are struggling just to get to the next day, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

... contd.