‘America, we are better than these last eight years’ – Barack Obama

Before a cheering crowd of 80,000 Democrats packed into the Denver Broncos' football stadium, Barack Obama last night accepted his party's nomination to run for president. "America, we are better than these last eight years," he said. "We are a better country than this."

The first African-American ever to be nominated for the White House by a major US party, Senator Obama promised to reverse the economic downturn afflicting the US, to cut taxes, to call for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, and to restore America's moral standing in the world.

He attacked the record of the Bush administration and the Republican nominee John McCain. "We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight years," he said.

And he recalled the message of Martin Luther King, who gave his 'I have a dream' speech 45 years ago to the day. "America, we cannot turn back," said Obama. "We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to walk into the future."

The McCain campaign immediately released a statement dismissing the speech as "misleading" and "at odds with the meagre record of Barack Obama." Spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "The fact remains, Barack Obama is still not ready to be president."

As Alexander Cockburn writes on The First Post today, the immediate Republican response was "evidence that his shots at Bush and McCain had drawn blood".

However, Cockburn goes on to argue that Obama's speech exposed a fundamental problem. "Once the message shifts from diffuse sermons about national unity to concrete proposals on tax cuts for the middle class and closing of corporate loopholes,the Haves will roll out their heavy artillery against this 'divisive' spokesman for the Have-Nots, a preacher-cum-populist radical rabble-rouserwho has finally ripped off the mask of 'bipartisanship'."

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 29, 2008