Editor's Note: Sen. Barack Obama contributed this commentary to the Duluth News-Tribune, a Forum Communications newspaper. The West Central Tribune in sharing Obama's commentary with our readers.
This is a defining moment. Our nation is at war. Our planet is in peril. Our American Dream is slipping away. We've never paid more for health care or college. It's harder to save and retire. And too many Americans have lost faith that their leaders can or will do anything about it.
As a Great Lakes senator, I understand the challenges that our region faces. We cannot wait any longer for universal health care, or good jobs, or living wages and pensions we can count on. We cannot wait to fix our schools, reinvest in our infrastructure, halt global warming, or end this war in Iraq.
I chose to run for president because I believed that the size of these challenges had outgrown the capacity of our broken politics to solve them. We can't afford four more years of the same divisive fight in Washington that's about scoring political points instead of solving problems. It's time to turn the page.
It's time to take tax breaks away from corporations that ship jobs overseas, and to put a tax cut in the pockets of working people. It's time to invest in 21st century infrastructure to create jobs, safeguard our security, and connect our communities. It's time to give our children a world-class education and to make health care affordable for all Americans. And it's time to stand up for a secure retirement by passing bankruptcy laws that protect workers instead of banks, and pensions instead of CEO bonuses.
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We can't afford the same politics of fear that tells Democrats that the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, act, and vote like George Bush Republicans. When I am president, I will end a war in Iraq that I opposed from the start; end the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like; and lead the world to combat the threats of the 21st century -- terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease.
In this election, it is time to stand for change.
This has been our message since the beginning of this campaign. It was our message when we were down and our message when we were up. Because we know that the only way to change this country is from the bottom up. It's a lesson that is the legacy of a great Minnesotan, Paul Wellstone, who brought new people into the process; pushed back against special interests; stood for principle ahead of politics; and spread a sense of purpose across this country.
I have spent over two decades working for change from the bottom up. I fought for jobs and opportunity as an organizer on the streets of Chicago when the local steel plant closed. I stood up as a civil rights lawyer for people who were denied opportunity on the job or justice at the voting booth. I expanded health care to hundreds of thousands of Illinois families and gave a tax cut to working people as a state senator. And when I got to Washington, I stood up to the special interests to help pass the most far-reaching ethics reform since Watergate.
This election is too important to settle for what we know. That's why I'm asking you in Northern Minnesota to reach for what we know is possible; to choose the future over the past.
If you vote for me on Tuesday, then you can send the cynics who say we can't do this a message that we are one people, we are one nation, and our time for change has come; if you stand for change, then together we will begin the next chapter in America's story with three words that will ring from sea to shining sea: Yes we can.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is a Democratic candidate for president of the United States.
