At least the progressive Brits do, as a raft of Guardian articles show.
Follow me over the fold for their lead article by Gary Younge who reflects on how Obama has transformed Democratic Party politics.
Gary Younge in The Guardian:
Obama's win was the result not of mobilizing the Democratic base but transforming it. More than a third of his support was from the under-30s and most of those who backed him had never been to a caucus before. A large number of independents also flocked to him, helping to boost Democratic caucus goers to almost double the number four years ago.
In so doing he not only helped remould the electoral landscape of the Democratic party, he also refashioned the racial expectations of America's electoral politics.
Isn't that what we've been trying to do, here at dailykos? Shouldn't we be ecstatic? Yes, Edwards' rhetoric has been more populist. But doesn't actually mobilizing a huge new base count for more than words?
Not to mention that the whole arc of Obama's life has been as a grass-roots organizer. Think of an unknown college graduate moving to the South Side of Chicago in the Harold Washington years (long before Harvard Law School). That's the kind of evidence of intent we ought to expect from our leaders. His history, like his cadences, draws more from MLK's example than any other candidate does.
Nor are Obama's words in any way shabby. Personally, if he wins I look forward to hearing the first inaugural since JFK's that has any immortality in it. I'm dating myself now, but these words thrilled me when I heard them live as a ten-year-old:
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans
Even though he was speaking about my father's generation, the ones who fought World War II, I felt they spoke for me too. No less than Dylan did later.
The ensuing long political tragedy of my lifetime is sometimes almost enough to make you stop hoping. Think of what might have been, absent a few bullets in the 1960s that started a tradition of dirty deeds at critical junctures practiced ever since, and it chills your soul. A part of me fears to rest my hopes in any one man; I fear for Obama in this violent America, truly No Country for Old Men. Then I remember another part of that inaugural speech, poignant for what it acknowledged and what it could not know was to come:
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
Again.