Part of the reality of a political campaign is the fact that narratives evolve over time. This is necessary and healthy, as it is important to display and celebrate the many facets of a candidate so that the American people can get a full picture of the person for whom they will be casting their vote. Sometimes, however, we can get caught up in the present, in what we have become, and forget from whence we came.
At the beginning of February of this year, when we were concerned merely with the outcome of Super Tuesday, not knowing that there were still four months of a cut-throat primary ahead of us before we would choose a nominee, not even knowing who the Republican opponent would be, a group called will.i.am released a music video summarizing Barack Obama's message at that time.
It is time for all Democrats to watch that video again. Please follow me over the fold.
If you're like myself and my friends, you've gotten caught up recently in the frustration of lies from the Republicans and complicity from the mainstream media. You've found yourself wishing it were 5 November so that everything could just be over, regardless of the outcome. You may even find yourself avoiding political discussions or convincing yourself that donating will be enough. You may even be playing Chicken Little here on Kos or elsewhere. You may be losing hope.
This campaign, my fellow Kossacks, was founded on Hope, and we are forgetting what that really means. We are allowing ourselves to be cowed by politics. And we're becoming like every other political campaign.
Obama is different from every other candidate of which I have been aware in my short life - he is NOT the saviour who will deliver us from Bush, regardless of what the media and the McCain campaign want us to think. He has never painted himself that way. What he is and has always been is a leader: the man who will finally get the American people off their feet and taking responsibility for themselves.
Obama isn't going to fix the world for us. He's just going to give us the opportunity to fix it for ourselves, and that's what we all need to start remembering.