I really really like Obama. I heard someone - a Christian - calling him a racist America-hater, and I just don't think that's true at all.

I am glad that he has publicly disagreed with some of the things Jeremiah Wright has said, but in reading the context of some of the sermons, some of those statements aren't as bad as they are made out to be.

And I do think that he, more than any other candidate can bring people together. I get so tired of the BS on both sides of the aisle, and he's one of the few who I've seen be able to cut through it.

Thanks for posting that transcript, Miles.

Miles,
Thanks so much for posting this transcript. I heard that he was going to give this speech and some of the commentary following it, and I really wanted to know just what he said.

At the beginning of the presidential campaigning (they begin SO early), I told a friend that I thought that Democrats would be crazy to nominate Obama because I didn't think that Main Street America was ready to elect someone who wasn't white. Even a white person with his last name, I thought, would never be able to win a general election. I didn't like it, but I just thought that America still had too far to go, regardless of whether he was a good candidate or not.

I'm not sure for whom I'll be voting in November, but I now feel bad that I said that. It may still prove to be true, but I don't want to be a person who thinks and talks like that. If nothing else, I want to seize on Obama's determination to hope and to be positive, to fight against the prevailing trend to be cynical and negative. I really respect the fact that he will talk about stuff that people are afraid to talk about and address negative things that people say with precise and definite language. Refreshing.