The Speech, Finale

LM is, for once, speechless.

"I...I never really thought this would happen in my lifetime.

"And now I'm going to have to rethink everything I believe about this country."

You and all the rest of us, beloved. You and all the rest of us.

Tonight's speech was exactly what it needed to be: a proclamation of a new political era, and the rebel yell of a newly-remade political party. The last 40 years have been hard and miserable for those of us who believed in such quaint ideals as compassion and the Constitution and the common good. But because enough of us are finally ready for them to be over, they will be. Because in a democracy, that's how its supposed to work -- even though we'd long ago given up hope that it could ever work that way again.

If we lose this one, boys and girls, it won't be because we had another incompetent candidate, or our so-called party leaders (whose careers also ended tonight) ran another imbecilic campaign, or because there was some transcendent failure of the vision thing.

As the man said: It's not about him. It's about us. It's ours to lose -- or theirs to steal. We've got another nine weeks, and then the future starts anew.

At last.

I expect all of us will have more analysis of tonight, and the whole Denver experience, going up tomorrow. But for tonight, we're just basking in the deep relief that somehow, after this long time lost, the far shore is finally within view, and we are going to stand on it very soon.

Say it in the benediction of your faith: So be it.