"This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.
Yes we can."
- Barack Obama, President-elect, November 4, 2008
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This narrative, carried in many ways through Obama's campaign is what won it for him. America has, from the days that a few stalwart souls landed in Jamestown, at Plymouth Rock, and repeated that again and again even today, America has always been about becoming a better place, of freeing people from that which held them down.
Protest will only get you a headline. Aspirational narratives get you elected.
Now, how do we use that fact to show everyone what could be possible if only we learned more, understood more, did more, cared more, did more. We would vote our hopes and not our fears. There is now area of discourse in this country where this is more true than at the nexus of energy, climate change and economics.
For every human being here and elsewhere, there can be a deep-down feeling and vision that anything is now possible.
It is a renewal, and it feels welcome.