QUOTE OF THE DAY

Al Giordano:

And it was the defeat in New Hampshire - the candidate, under intense public spotlight during an obvious setback - that paradoxically caused his grassroots base to rally financially behind him on a scale never seen before in American politics.

That moment was the beginning of an important lesson for the US left and its Chicken Little tendencies to think that any adversity or setback or stumble means the sky is going to fall and all will be terrible and ruined always and forever. The "Chicken Little" tendencies and the rising counter-meme dominated much of the spring and summer and even fall among Obama supporters. (And there is still, evidently, some difficulty in some corners accepting the reality of winning, a difficulty that manifests in the droop-eyed insistences that nothing can or will ever change, or that Obama has "sold us out" before he is even inaugurated: really, this is something for the psychologists to study.)

But for me, it was that night, a year ago today, that provided the lesson - never let a setback wreck our spirits, and never presume it's as bad as your opponents tell you it is - and gave the opening for a "teaching moment" about the contagion that is panic and the antidote that is hope.

There will be continued "teaching moments" to come, starting less than two weeks from today, when "yes we can" becomes, also, "yes, we did."

Barack Obama