Seconding Speeches on behalf of Senator Barack Obama
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 04:07 PM
Senator Ken Salazar (Colorado) Welcome to Colorado. Welcome to the West, where we’re building the new Democratic majority. Over four centuries ago, before the Pilgrims and the Puritans, before Jamestown and Plymouth, my ancestors came to this land and founded the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. They named it Santa Fe, the City of Holy Faith, because they knew that only faith could secure a brighter future for themselves and for their children. For five generations, my family has farmed the same land in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, 250 miles from here. Together they raised eight children on our farm. We were poor, with no electricity and no telephone, but all eight of us became first generation college graduates. My parents gave us the covenant of America, the covenant that binds us together as one nation: that no matter who you are or where you’re from, anything is possible in America. Just 500 miles southeast of here, in El Dorado, Kansas, another mother instilled that same dream in her son, Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s grandfather defended that dream as a soldier in General Patton’s army. Barack Obama’s father followed that dream to an America of freedom and opportunity. For Barack Obama, that dream runs deep and strong. But for the last eight years, under the failed policies of George Bush, the American dream has been slipping away. For too many American families, no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get ahead. The White House has turned its back on you. The rural America I know has become a forgotten America. We can’t afford more of the same. We can’t afford four more years of letting the American dream fade. We can’t afford four more years of forgetting the middle class. We can’t afford four more years of George Bush policies with John McCain. The time has come for a president who has lived the American dream, who is on our side. A president who will cut our dependence on foreign oil and lead us into the new energy frontier.
A president who will make us stronger and safer as Americans. A president who will make health care available to every American. A president who will make sure that no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, if you work hard, you too can live the American dream. That is the president that Barack Obama will be. That is why I proudly second the nomination of Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. Thank you! God bless America!
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida) For more than 15 years, I’ve been proud to serve the people of South Florida, represented here in a fully-seated Florida delegation. Like so many Americans, like all Democrats, including all of us who campaigned for Hillary Clinton, whose campaign I was proud to co-chair, I know what’s at stake in this election. So don’t be fooled by any political ad from John McCain. No matter where we stood at the beginning of this campaign, Democrats stand together today. We believe passionately in Barack Obama’s message of changing the direction of our country. We support enthusiastically his plans to restore the American dream for American families. And we stand united, proudly, in our determination to elect Barack Obama. And so, I second his nomination as the next President of the United States of America. I’m a mother of three young children: my 5-year-old daughter Shelby and my 9-year-old twins Rebecca and Jake. Recently, Jake blurted out: “Mom, when George Bush was elected, I was 1 year old.” My children have lived their whole lives under the failed policies of George Bush. And if John McCain is elected, they’ll live their whole childhood under more of the same. Instead of John McCain, a candidate who thinks that American families are “better off,” we need a president, Barack Obama, who knows better, who will give a tax cut – $1,000 every year – to middle-class families so you can pay the bills, afford quality health care, buy a home, and save for retirement. Instead of a candidate who voted against giving women equal pay for equal work and who says Roe v. Wade should be overturned, we need a president, Barack Obama, who will fight to end the gender wage gap and who will protect a woman’s right to choose. Instead of a candidate who votes against funds for education, against Head Start for children, against Pell Grants for college, we need a president, Barack Obama, who will
invest in early childhood education, recruit new teachers, and make college more affordable with tax credits in exchange for community service. That’s the change America deserves, the change Barack Obama will deliver, not just for the privileged few, but for all Americans, men and women, our sons and daughters. It’s been said that “children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” I cannot imagine a more inspiring message than the one my son will someday send to his children: “I was 9 years old when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America.”
Representative Artur Davis (Alabama) I’m honored to second the nomination of the man whose victory tonight takes us closer to becoming what we know America can be: a place where who you are, what you have and where you come from pose no permanent barriers; where our destiny is what our God and our dreams determine it to be. In a cavernous auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, this past January, I heard Barack Obama tell my state that our generation can find its way again. I heard him tell my state on a Sunday afternoon that if you really want to see a politics of faith and morality, you’ll find it in a politics with an abiding conviction for the fate of the least and the lost among us. I heard him remind my red state that there is no such thing as a Democratic way or Republican way to build strong families; that work and personal responsibility are Democratic standards, too; that to sustain our veterans and protect our soldiers is neither a liberal value nor a conservative value, but an American value. Because the men and women who wear the American uniform and fight under the American flag belong not to some of us, but to all of us. And I saw a band of people, 20,000 strong, who don’t live together, don’t send their children to school together, who have no history of voting together, linked in a common cause together, ready to take action together. And ladies and gentlemen, this is our cause: a president and a country who will lead and inspire the free world; who will stand for the rule of law; who will remember that torture is the way of the people who hate us and not our way. Our cause is a president and a country who will affirm that terrorism can never win, unless it warps us and makes us forget who we are and what we are. Ladies and gentlemen, 20 years ago, I watched the Democratic Convention on a little TV in a tiny motel room in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother and grandmother and I were forced to live in that room for three weeks because our home had been foreclosed. The fact that I could go from a foreclosure and watching the convention in a tiny motel room to standing before you and the nation 20 years later nominating the next President of the United States tells you very little about me, but tells us everything that is right about our country. My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, I have never seen a moment like this. I have never seen a sense of urgency like this. In my 40 years, I have never seen my
country as energized as this. As our next president has said, from the places where people hurt to the places where people dream, “our time is now.”