Obama wins the democratic nomination and ends his first speech as nominee thus:

Now, the other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a good thing. That is a debate I look forward to. It is a debate that the American people deserve on the issues that will help determine the future of this country and the future for our children.

But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon. What you won't see from this campaign or this party is a politics that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to polarize, because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first.

Despite what the good senator from Arizona may have said tonight, I've seen people of differing views and opinions find common cause many times during my two decades in public life, and I've brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the south side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools. I've sat across the table from law enforcement officials and civil rights advocates to reform a criminal justice system that sent 13 innocent people to death row. I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break, to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent, and reduce the influence of lobbyists who have all too often set the agenda in Washington.

In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because, behind all the false labels and false divisions and categories that define us, beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes.

And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again. So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union, and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union. So it was for the greatest generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity. So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines, the women who shattered glass ceilings, the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause. So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better and kinder and more just. And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment. This is our time, our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face, our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge -- I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people.

I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless, this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal, this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, Minnesota. God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

For me, cynicism and snide remarks lurk under the surface, but hope is winning out. Obama has steered through the nomination campaign by 'talking to Americans as if they were adults' and refusing to respond negatively while Clinton did the Republican's work for them. He still won. Clinton's ex-campaign head, Mark Penn, made a career out of target marketing as politics:

Americans overwhelmingly favour small, reasonable ideas over big, grandiose schemes ... There is no One America any more, or Two, or Three, or Eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas.

As the Grauniad points out:

A message more opposed to Obama's call for unity would be hard to imagine.

Is hope winning out simply because it's a more pleasant emotion than despair? Is Obama just another kind of salesman, palming people off with the snake-oil of 'a more perfect union?'

Well, if he wins, I guess we'll find out. But the contrast with the neocons is like being let out of a cell with permanent cable TV blaring a shopping channel and Burger King food the only source of calories, so it's a hard not to get a little dizzy.

I suppose if he wins, and if in four year's time its all gone awry, Obama can blame those self-same Americans he now professes to put his faith in. Still, a good day to be an American: it's bad enough having some lunatic Saudi billionnaire trying to scare the shit out of you without your own government helping him.