Obama Makes History, Says Thanks

By Corey HallSpecial from to the NNPA from the Chicago Citizen CHICAGO (NNPA) — Nearly 700 days after first announcing his intention to serve Illinois as a United States Senator, Barack Obama claims he has not changed. “I’m still fired up!…Thank you, Illinois!” he told a capacity crowd of celebrants Tuesday night at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Wacker Drive, as he made his first speech as United States Senator-elect Barack Obama. Obama enjoyed a landslide victory over Republican challenger Alan Keyes and two other independent party candidates. He becomes the fifth Black person elected to the United States Senate in America’s history. As he accepted victory, Obama acknowledged Peter Fitzgerald, whom he replaces. Fitzgerald, a one-term Senator who chose not to seek re-election, served Illinois with integrity, Obama said. When announcing his desire to win Fitzgerald’s seat, Obama recalled, people generally respected him and his accomplishments as state Senator – such as providing health insurance for children who did not have it, and reforming the death penalty – but doubted “in a nation as divided as ours, whether someone who looked like me could ever aspire to the United States Senate.” These observers, Obama continued, wondered if America would elect someone with his unique name. Tuesday’s victory, he said, proved that a campaign conducted with a different concept and notion of America and her people could succeed. Americans have a common decency and shared values that eclipse race and region, income and ethnicity, Obama continued. Everyone’s mutual obligations to each other, he said, are expressed through family, work, worship and government. “We believe in the possibility (of) a government that was just as decent as the American people,” Obama said. “We knew that despite the misinformation, despite the bitterness, despite the partisan politics, that when you talk to people, those common values would come out.” During these conversations, Obama added, he heard how people did not expect government to be a problem solver. Government, he heard the people say, should help provide the necessities that make the “American Dream” possible. Obama then stated that his campaign represented the values once championed by President Abraham Lincoln, where the possibility of “appealing to the better angels of our nature” is made possible. “We stand here as one people, as one nation, proclaiming ourselves to be one America, with the capacity of working together to create a better future for each other,” Obama said. “What a magnificent gift that is to the nation. How wonderful it is we have been able to accomplish this without negative ads, and without the normal partisan politics, and just focusing on the issues that matter to people, healthcare, and jobs and education.” Obama viewed his election as a simultaneous conclusion and beginning. He then acknowledged that his tenure in the United States Senate would not be evaluated by Tuesday’s landslide victory; instead, it would be judged on how many improvements he made possible to Illinoisans who are struggling. “We will be measured,” he said, “by whether those men all across the state…those folks who have been laid off their jobs, seen their jobs moved to Mexico or China, lost their healthcare…whether they are able to find jobs that allow them to support a family and maintain their dignity. “We are going to be measured by how well we deliver the resources to the school districts all across the state, who are in deficit spending. (We are going to be measured on how well) we make sure children have the teachers and the programs they need,” Obama continued. “We are going to be measured on whether or not we can provide access and affordability to healthcare, so that no family in Illinois is bankrupt when they get sick. We are going to be measured by whether our senior citizens can retire with some dignity and respect; we are going to be measured by the degree to which we can craft a foreign policy in which we are simply not feared in the world, but we are also respected.”