At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has been posting some readers’ thoughts about what Barack Obama’s nomination means to them.
Please use this thread to post any of your own thoughts and feelings, as well as your hopes and dreams for the beginning of Obama’s presidency.
Although I am the Iowa blogosphere’s resident Obamaskeptic, I find it incredibly moving that my children will have no memory of a time when people questioned whether a black person could be elected president.
I have a long wish list for what a Democratic president can accomplish with the help of a Democratic Congress, but if I had to boil it down to just one thing, I hope that Obama will seize the mandate he has to enact big change, and not water things down too much in the name of bipartisanship.
I’m talking about changes that will still affect people’s lives decades into the future. At MyDD bruh3 compiled this impressive list of programs and laws enacted during LBJ’s presidency. We can’t imagine the U.S. without these things. The Republicans don’t even pretend to be against them anymore.
Also in this thread, feel free to share your celebration plans for tomorrow. If I weren’t trying to lose a few pounds, I would bake Abraham Lincoln’s favorite cake (recipe courtesy of Obama Foodorama).
UPDATE: I watched the ceremony through Obama’s speech at a party organized by people who used to work on the Biden campaign in Iowa. They were cheering and clapping and even giving some standing ovations. Fun atmosphere.
Courtesy of Daily Kos, I am putting the text of Obama’s address (as prepared for delivery) after the jump. It was a good speech, I thought.
What did you think?
Incidentally, Obama did not flub the oath of office–Chief Justice John Roberts did.
SECOND UPDATE: A few more thoughts. In general, the speech struck me as quite low-key. There were very few applause lines. I assume he purposely did not want to feed into a mood of celebration. Maybe he was trying to lower expectations or not come across as taunting the opposition, but for whatever reason, he didn’t give that enormous crowd many chances to go wild.
Like Deeth, I thought it was noteworthy that Obama mentioned “non-believers” along with the various religions we have in this country. Perhaps that was a gesture toward people who were upset that Obama chose Rick Warren to deliver the invocation.
Speaking of which, I disagreed with Obama’s decision to bestow that honor on Warren, but I am glad the crowd was respectful during the prayer. I am certainly not going to give conservatives the satisfaction of getting bent out of shape because Warren mentioned Jesus and recited the Lord’s Prayer. What Warren was going to say or not say at the inauguration itself wasn’t the issue for me.
I am genuinely surprised that Jeff Angelo found Obama’s speech to be “full of petty shots [at] his predecessor.” Huh? For what it’s worth, this Iowa conservative blogger also felt Obama was “smacking down” George Bush. In contrast, Krusty Konservative described the speech as “ambiguous,” noting that “George W. Bush could have given the same exact speech.”
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