The Monday through Wednesday speeches are in this post.  Thursday’s highlights are in the next post.

Michelle Obama

John Kerry

John McCain voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Ninety percent of George Bush is just more than we can take. … Never has strategy been so replaced by ideology.  … They misread the threat and misled the country. Instead of freedom, it’s Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dictators everywhere that are on the march. … Even a nation as powerful as the United States needs some friends in this world. We need a leader who understands all our security challenges, not just bombs and guns, but global warming, global terror and global AIDS. … Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. … Before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same “Rove” tactics and the same “Rove” staff….

When we choose a commander-in-chief, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right. When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, “Next stop, Baghdad!”, Barack Obama saw, even then, “an occupation of “undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences” that would “only fan the flames of the Middle East.” Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it “the soft comfort of appeasement.” But today, Bush’s diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it “cut and run.” But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on – guess what? – a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

No one can question Barack Obama’s patriotism. Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American by his family: his grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II, his grandfather who marched in Patton’s army, and his great uncle who enlisted in the army right out of high school at the height of the war. …

Bill Clinton

… Clearly, the job of the next President is to rebuild the American Dream and restore America’s standing in the world.

Everything I learned in my eight years as President and in the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.

He has a remarkable ability to inspire people, to raise our hopes and rally us to high purpose.  He has the intelligence and curiosity every successful President needs.  His policies on the economy, taxes, health care and energy are far superior to the Republican alternatives.  He has shown a clear grasp of our foreign policy and national security challenges, and a firm commitment to repair our badly strained military. His family heritage and life experiences have given him a unique capacity to lead our increasingly diverse nation and to restore our leadership in an ever more interdependent world.  The long, hard primary tested and strengthened him. And in his first presidential decision, the selection of a running mate, he hit it out of the park.

With Joe Biden’s experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama’s proven understanding, insight, and good instincts, America will have the national security leadership we need.

…

Barack Obama also will not allow the world’s problems to obscure its opportunities. Everywhere, in rich and poor countries alike, hardworking people need good jobs; secure, affordable healthcare, food, and energy; quality education for their children; and economically beneficial ways to fight global warming.  These challenges cry out for American ideas and American innovation.  When Barack Obama unleashes them, America will save lives, win new allies, open new markets, and create new jobs for our people.

Most important, Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home.  People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

…

The choice is clear.  The Republicans will nominate a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam. He loves our country every bit as much as we all do. As a Senator, he has shown his independence on several issues. But on the two great questions of this election, how to rebuild the American Dream and how to restore America’s leadership in the world, he still embraces the extreme philosophy which has defined his party for more than 25 years, a philosophy we never had a real chance to see in action until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and Congress. Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades were implemented.

…

They took us from record surpluses to an exploding national debt; from over 22 million new jobs down to 5 million; from an increase in working family incomes of $7,500 to a decline of more than $2,000; from almost 8 million Americans moving out of poverty to more than 5 and a half million falling into poverty – and millions more losing their health insurance. …

Sixteen years ago, … the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief.  Sound familiar? …

His life is a 21^st Century incarnation of the American Dream.  His achievements are proof of our continuing progress toward the “more perfect union” of our founders’ dreams.  The values of freedom and equal opportunity which have given him his historic chance will drive him as president to give all Americans, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability, their chance to build a decent life, and to show our humanity, as well as our strength, to the world.

We see that humanity, that strength, and our future in Barack and Michelle Obama and their beautiful children.  We see them reinforced by the partnership with Joe Biden, his wife Jill, a dedicated teacher, and their family.

Barack Obama will lead us away from division and fear of the last eight years back to unity and hope.  If, like me, you still believe America must always be a place called Hope, then join Hillary, Chelsea and me in making Senator Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

===================

U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., Illinois

Senator Jack Reed, Rhode Island

the strength and security of our nation is not solely the charge of those who serve in uniform. It rests with each and every one of us—in the choices we make

I joined Senator Obama and Senator Chuck Hagel on a bipartisan trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. … What truly struck me was the astounding level of admiration, enthusiasm and respect that our troops have for Senator Obama. Everywhere we went Barack was surrounded by soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who simply wanted an opportunity to shake his hand and thank him for his efforts and leadership. Our men and women in uniform know a leader when they see one.

…. For eight years, John McCain has fallen in line with every one of George Bush’s national security decisions…. While Senator McCain was a cheerleader-in-chief for the Bush Administration’s rush to a war against a nation that posed no imminent threat, Barack Obama and I opposed the war in Iraq from day one.

While Senator McCain said that we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq, Barack Obama warned of “occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.”

=======================

Senator Evan Bayh, Indiana

… Under George Bush, we’ve become more dependent on imported oil today than we were on 9/11.  And with John McCain, America will pay another $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years to hostile or unstable nations for foreign oil. That is not the change we need.

George Bush took the largest surplus in our nation’s history and turned it into the largest deficit, borrowing billions from China, Japan, even Mexico. John McCain would continue this dangerous fiscal irresponsibility. That is not the change we need.

Under George Bush, the Middle East has become more troubled, … [with] a resurgent Hamas, an emboldened Hezbollah and an Iran determined to get nuclear weapons. That is not the change we need. … Under George Bush, America has become bogged down in an endless war in Iraq, spending more than $648 billion dollars there, $10 billion a month that could be spent to strengthen America’s schools, provide health care for America’s seniors or create new jobs repairing America’s roads, ports and bridges.

Remember “Mission Accomplished”? Remember George Bush saying “bring ‘em on”?  Remember our soldiers having to search through garbage dumps to find armor for their humvees? Well, the mission was far from over. They did come on and American soldiers lost their lives because of this administration’s disgraceful incompetence.

George Bush and John McCain were wrong about going to war in Iraq, are wrong about how to get us out of Iraq, wrong to ignore the danger in Afghanistan. The time for change has come, and Barack Obama is the change we need.

… George Bush promised to be “a uniter, not a divider.” Well, it didn’t turn out that way. He divided the nation more profoundly than at any time since the Vietnam War, pitting American against American.

But, as Barack says, we can no longer be divided into red states and blue states but must stand united as 50 red, white, and blue states, with a common cause and common destiny. That’s the change we need.

And that’s why this campaign is about more than a single person or party. It’s about a cause bigger than ourselves. For teachers and students yearning for better schools, your cause is our cause. For the working men and women who need a government that says “no” to unfair foreign trade practices, your cause is our cause. For seniors struggling to afford medicine and pay the grocery bill, your cause is our cause. To the soldiers, sailors and airmen who deserve a commander- in-chief whose judgment and wisdom are worthy of their courage and sacrifice, your cause is our cause.

That is the change we need. And that is the change that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will deliver, and we will, once again, live up to the full meaning of our creed: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice ….

=================================

The Honorable Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State

… Senator McCain claims to already know everything a president needs to know, but the first qualification any leader needs to have is the ability to learn. We need a president who is not wedded to 20^th century thinking, who can forge a network of power and principle that will keep America strong and safe in the 21st century.

On Inauguration Day, President Barack Obama will … summon all to a new era … where democracy is promoted, not imposed….

No president can be expected to solve every problem, but Senator Obama has already shown that he has the toughness and good judgment needed to confront our enemies without alienating friends; to defeat the practitioners of terror without creating more terrorists; and to demonstrate that the American dream still has meaning for people everywhere.

Senator Obama speaks to our hopes, to our belief in ourselves, to the future and to the better angels of our nature.  ….

=====================

Michele S. Jones

I stand before you not as a politician or government official, but as an American citizen and as a soldier for more than 25 years. … [F]or the last five of those years, I served as the Ninth Command Sergeant Major of the Army Reserve.

It is without hesitation, and with much conviction, that I endorse Senator Barack Obama for President…  He is … the most qualified and able candidate to serve as my commander-in-chief. He is the type of commander-in-chief that America’s soldiers need and deserve.

…

Senator Obama truly exemplifies what a commander-in-chief should be: a leader who understands the threats we face and who cares for every young man and woman under his command.

I first became impressed with Senator Obama when he took the time to call a young soldier who was unable to complete his initial training, not because he was injured but because he was terminally ill with brain cancer. Senator Obama did not do it for the publicity or a photo op.  He did it because I asked, and he did it because he cared.

America’s service men and women need a president and a commander-in-chief with the courage to serve, the gift to lead and the ability to get things done. That president is Barack Obama.

[Jonathon's Comment: Does taking time to care for an individual (the soldier with brain cancer) fit with the ability to get things done?  Perhaps yes - the more you care, the more honour and thus power you gain.]

=====================

Harry Reid, Nevada

The history of the last hundred years has been a toxic mix of oil and war.

Wars were funded by, impossible without, and usually fought over oil. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nazi invasion of Russia, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and countless other conflicts have been based in whole or in part on the world’s addiction to oil. Even today, dictators and authoritarians from Venezuela to Russia, from Sudan to North Korea, base their actions—and their power to oppress their citizens and threaten their neighbors—solely on access to or sale of oil on the world market.

Since the turn of the new century, those hard facts have come home to America in the most vicious way. Attacked at home by oil-funded terrorists, abroad with oil-funded insurgents, … and faced with acquisition of our industrial base by oil-funded multinationals, …. If we continue to follow this slippery, oil-slicked path, our citizens will shiver in darkness as our resources hemorrhage to Third World thugs whose only virtue is their control of petroleum-based energy.

These threats are real, they are immediate, and they are potentially overwhelming. And the saddest part, the most terrible irony, is that we finance them every time we pump gas or pay utility bills.

The threats are not new, nor is their solution. President Carter warned us about it in the 1970s when he proposed real solutions—conservation, fuel efficiency, and alternative fuels—to what he correctly named the “moral equivalent of war.” His proposals were ridiculed by Republicans who forgot that both Presidents Nixon and Ford had joined him in calling for America’s energy independence.

That bipartisanship, however, became partisan as this nation entered an era of oil industry dominance when, for the 28 years since 1980 except for the Clinton presidency, former oil industry executives have been president or vice president of the United States and indeed, for the past eight years, have filled both offices at once.

For the past eight years, the man in the Oval Office has tipped his hat over his eyes, kicked back his chair, and snoozed at his desk. … Tasked with cutting off funding to terrorists, he slept on duty while oil shortages worsened, oil prices soared, and dollars by the ton were delivered to terrorists’ banks in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Faced with a new kind of war, this president and his vice president helped their friends the old-fashioned way: through war profiteering, tax cuts for billionaires, and in many cases out-and-out corruption.

…

There’s an answer, but only if someone will speak truth to power.

There’s an answer, but only if someone will unite Americans to share common burdens to reach common goals.

There’s an answer, but only if someone has the values, the virtues, and the vision to lead us through these troubled waters to that beckoning shore.

There’s an answer. … Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is unique. So are we all. Each of us brings to the world our own strengths and weaknesses.

What qualities then, have earned him our support for the highest executive office? Even his opponents agree Senator Obama is smart and thoughtful. His biography proves he’s committed to basic American values like hard work and fair play, and that he is honest and forthright. He articulates a vision of energy independence that is comprehensive and based on sound science and sound policies, science we know will work.

These policies include the answers we discussed at our energy summit in Las Vegas last week: wind, geothermal, and solar power generation and the development of efficient power transmission. Even more importantly, they include conservation measures ignored and indeed ridiculed by the current administration: smarter vehicles, more efficient and accessible mass transit, energy-effective building codes, and retrofitting all have their place in Senator Obama’s vision of an energy-smart America.

But John McCain has a vision too, which in fairness I must address.

When doctors screen out the quack nostrums and phony remedies we call snake oil, they use two fundamental principles: the maxim “first, do no harm” and the question “is it safe and effective?”

In Congress, as in medicine, when we are offered snake oil as a remedy for the nation’s energy ills, our question should be: “Is it safe and effective? Does it do more harm than good?”

…

But even if Doc McCain’s magic off-shore oil elixir won’t work, will it do any harm?

The answer is, we just don’t know, and neither does he. … It might not destroy vital fisheries. It might not pollute our waterways.  Nobody really knows. But kindly old Doc McCain would like to sell it to you anyway.

The simple fact is that the promise of more oil isn’t part of the solution; it’s part of the problem. At best this is an 18th century answer to a 21st century crisis; at worst it’s pure baloney.

There are no quick and easy answers here, folks. For over a quarter of a century, the Republicans have sold their magic beans with a promise of a giant beanstalk and gold over the horizon. Look what they’ve done to our country. Look what they’ve done to our planet.

…

It is time for recognition that threats to our planet are threats to our great country.

It is time to understand that in the long run, indeed in the short run, we must wean ourselves of addiction to oil.

It is time, my friends, to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Joe Biden, Delaware

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 08:20 PM

… Hillary … has made history and will continue to make history.

…. I am so grateful that my mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, is here. … She believes bravery lives in every heart and her expectation is that it will be summoned. … After the accident, she told me, “Joey, God sends no cross you cannot bear.”  And when I triumphed, she was quick to remind me it was because of others. My mother’s creed is the American creed: … You are everyone’s equal, and everyone is equal to you.

… We were told that anyone can make it if they try.  That was America’s promise. … [T]hat was the American dream and we knew it.

But today that American dream feels as if it’s slowly slipping away. I don’t need to tell you that. You feel it every single day in your own lives.

….Almost every night, I take the train home to Wilmington…. As I look out the window at the homes we pass, I can almost hear what they’re talking about at the kitchen table after they put the kids to bed.

Like millions of Americans, they’re asking questions as profound as they are ordinary. Questions they never thought they would have to ask:

• Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone?
• Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars to fill up the car?
• Winter’s coming. How are we going to pay the heating bills?
• Another year and no raise?
• Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care?
• Now, we owe more on the house than it’s worth. How are we going to send the kids to college?
• How are we gonna be able to retire?

… These are not isolated discussions among families down on their luck. These are common stories among middle-class people who worked hard and played by the rules on the promise that their tomorrows would be better than their yesterdays.

That promise is the bedrock of America. It defines who we are as a people. And now it’s in jeopardy. …

You know, I believe the measure of a man isn’t just the road he’s traveled; it’s the choices he’s made along the way. Barack Obama could have done anything after he graduated from college. With all his talent and promise, he could have written his ticket to Wall Street. But that’s not what he chose to do. He chose to go to Chicago. The South Side. There he met men and women who had lost their jobs. Their neighborhood was devastated when the local steel plant closed. Their dreams deferred. Their dignity shattered. Their self-esteem gone.

And he made their lives the work of his life. … Because Barack made that choice, 150,000 more children and parents have health care in Illinois. … And because Barack made that choice, working families in Illinois pay less taxes and more people have moved from welfare to the dignity of work. He got it done.

And when he came to Washington, I watched him hit the ground running, leading the fight to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation. He reached across party lines to pass a law that helps keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. …

… He has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don’t have to accept a situation we cannot bear. We have the power to change it. …

The personal courage and heroism John [McCain] demonstrated still amaze me. But I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country. For example, John thinks that during the Bush years “we’ve made great progress economically.” I think it’s been abysmal.

And in the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time.  …

Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history—a half trillion dollars in the last five years—he wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks.  But he voted time and again against incentives for renewable energy: solar, wind, biofuels. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

Millions of jobs have left our shores, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

… And when he says he will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on a surplus of nearly $80 billion, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

… For the last seven years, this administration has failed to face the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water; the challenge of climate change; and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front against terrorism.

… Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he said only three years ago, “Afghanistan—we don’t read about it anymore because it’s succeeded”? Or should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?

The fact is, al-Qaida and the Taliban—the people who actually attacked us on 9/11—have regrouped in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and are plotting new attacks.  And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Barack’s call for more troops.

John McCain was wrong. Barack Obama was right.

… …  Iran … …  Iraq … … Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was proven right.

…

Governor Deval Patrick

Our youngest daughter, Katherine, graduated from high school a year ago. Sitting at her graduation, I couldn’t help but reflect on the difference between her journey to that milestone, and my own. I grew up in poverty on the South Side of Chicago. I went to overcrowded, sometimes violent public schools. I shared a room and a set of bunk beds with my mother and sister, so we would rotate from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to the floor, every third night on the floor.

I can’t think of a time when I didn’t enjoy reading, but I don’t remember actually ever owning a book as a child. I got my break in 1970 when I came to Massachusetts on a scholarship to boarding school. For me, that was like landing on a different planet. Our daughter Katherine, by contrast, has always had her own room. By the time she got to high school, she had already traveled on four continents, and had shaken hands in the White House with the President of the United States.

One generation and the circumstances of my life and family were profoundly transformed. And though that story is still not told as often as we’d like, it’s told more often in this country than any other place on earth. That is the American story. It is who we are.  It is also what we stand for as Democrats: the simple notion that through hard work, tenacity, preparation and faith each of us has a chance at the American story. That American story is at risk today. More and more families are working harder but losing ground. The poor are in terrible shape. And the middle class are one paycheck away, one serious illness away, from being poor and deeply anxious about it. Together, we can change that. We’ve done it before.

In an earlier generation, as we faced dangers abroad and widespread suffering at home, our leaders responded with more than new policies. They summoned American aspirations  and called on a generation to serve and to sacrifice. And that generation, the so-called “Greatest Generation,” fought and won the war; built the federal highway system and great public universities and other institutions; expanded the middle class; and ignited the civil rights revolution. That generation—through their service and their sacrifice—made it possible for many of us to live the American story.

Barack Obama understands that we must renew our commitment to the American story today.

And the gateway is through a first-rate education. That’s why Barack Obama wants to help our kids be ready to learn when they get to kindergarten, by investing in early education.  That’s why he wants to fix and fund No Child Left Behind. That’s why he wants to better train and better reward high-performing teachers, why he wants to emphasize more math and science preparation, and why he wants to support the college ambitions of young people by helping them pay for it.

Barack Obama understands, like you do, that a well-educated America will make things again because we’ll be ready for emerging industries like clean energy, life sciences and high tech, which produce good jobs as well as a cleaner environment. And in that new economy, working people will again be able to see a path into the middle class and a secure future.

… The same folks who say they believe in small government and fiscal restraint are responsible for the biggest expansion in the size of government and the size of the federal deficit in American history. The same folks, with John McCain leading the charge, who say they support seniors, want to privatize Social Security and put corporate pension funds up for grabs. The same folks who call themselves “compassionate conservatives” are the folks who abandoned all those people not only after Katrina, but before that storm. The American people have had enough.

But Democrats don’t deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose. If the American story is to have a chance, we need more than better programs and policies. We need better vision.

When I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the ‘50s and ‘60s, everything was broken. Playgrounds, schools, families and lives—all broken. But we had a community. Those were days when every child was under the jurisdiction of every single adult on the block. So if you messed up in front of Ms. Jones’ stoop, she would straighten you out as if you were hers and then call home, so you would get it twice. What those adults were trying to get across to us was that they had a stake in us. They wanted us to understand that membership in a community is seeing the stake that each of us has in our neighbor’s dreams and struggles, as well as our own.

Barack Obama has challenged us to rebuild our national community. To focus not on the things that tear us apart, but on those that bring us together; not on the right or the left, but right and wrong; not on yesterday, but tomorrow. These are the possibilities Barack Obama asks us to reach for. This is the kind of leadership he offers to bring to the presidency—not because government can solve every problem in everybody’s life; but because “government,” as Barney Frank likes to say, is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.

This will not be easy. The status quo is a powerful force. … If we want the leadership our times demand, we are going to have to work for it. We are going to have to ask Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike. … We are going to have to put our cynicism down and learn to say again, like that Greatest Generation, “Yes, we can.”

If you want the change our country yearns for, if you want leadership that inspires us to bring the best that we have and the best that we are to a renewed American cause, if you want more than a campaign for president, but a cause to renew the American dream, then let’s join hands and go to work to elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

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Governor Brian Schweitzer

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Categories: Global Politics
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