Late Night Video Watching - Obama, Edwards, Digby

I wanted to share some of the speeches from today's Take Back America conference in Washington, which I'm kicking myself that I'm not attending. Ezra Klein gave a good summary of the speeches by Obama and Edwards, which by all accounts were very well-received. It sounds similar to their stump speeches at the California Democratic Party convention; Edwards lays out specific ideas and calls for bold and transformational change, while Obama calls to change our politics by building a mass movement to close the vaccuum into which the lobbyists and corporate interests insinuate themselves. Both messages are important and vital, and both were told very well. As Ezra says:

The underlying message of all (Edwards') remarks, though, was that much could be done, and there is no reason, either political or substantive, to approach these problems incrementally, or even cautiously. To put the contrast another way, where Obama promised to radically change our politics, Edwards promised to radically change our policies. Those were the choices offered to the conference this morning, and they were good ones.

Here's Obama's speech:



And Edwards' speech:



But more important than all that, the progressive blogosphere was given an award by the Campaign for America's Future, and accepting on our behalf was Digby, one of our best advocates, who ended her years of anonymity and revealed herself with an excellent speech about who we are and why we do what we do. I was proud to have sat around in front of computer screens and typed furiously away lo these many years after hearing Digby, my fellow Santa Monican, explain to the world what this movement is all about. Thanks, Digby.