Four years ago, Sen. Barack Obama spoke of his unique personal history and the American dream as an unknown. Thursday night, before a crowd of 85,000, Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president.
“This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive,” Obama said. “We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On Nov. 4th, we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough.’”
The speech fell on 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, an event lost on neither Obama nor his opponent. Before and after the speech, Sen. John McCain appeared in an advertisement congratulating Obama, and remarking on American progress in race relations.
This moment of unity between opponents highlighted a week’s worth of Democratic unity.
Despite concerns about protesters and dissent by Clinton supporters, the convention concluded without any major incidents. Vanderbilt Professor Bruce Barry, whose class “Mass Mediated Politics” covers how the media shapes election cycles, underscored some of the issues the Democrats faced.
“The Democrats came into the convention with three separate things they needed to do,” said Barry. “Bring holdout Clinton supporters around to some sense of party unity, convey to voters just now tuning in to the campaign a concrete sense of who Obama is and what his candidacy is about, and build a sharper critique of the McCain candidacy.”
Beyond the speeches given by both Clinton and her husband, Clinton stopped the roll call vote Wednesday and called for Obama’s nomination to be concluded by acclamation — a gesture intended to bring outlying Clinton supporters into the Obama camp.
And Obama did not refrain from critiquing McCain in his address.
“Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment,” Obama said, “but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.”
The change narrative was present throughout the night.
"Why is this election so close?" Al Gore asked. "I believe this election is close today because the forces of the status quo are desperately afraid of the change Obama represents."
Barry says the theme carries important implications for the younger generation. “The party and the candidate's emphasis on 'change' is assumed in part to appeal to younger voters, and polls show Obama well ahead with those voters, but that all assumes that younger voters turn out in larger than usual numbers in November.”
McCain will announce his vice presidential candidate Friday, but Thursday was undoubtedly Obama’s night.
“America, we are better than these last eight years,” he said. “We are a better country than this.”
Ethel Mickey and Katherine Miller contributed to this report.
