Through thick and thin

As I head out to vote this morning, my mind is on the last four years - and the next four. While its true that many of the Obama doubters on the left have gotten on board to fight for him in this election (and some haven't - but who cares about them?), there are some of us who have been at it all along...from day one. I want to give a shout-out to all of you.

It hasn't always been easy with the screaming from both the right and the left. And it doesn't mean that all of us who have stuck with this President through thick and thin have always agreed with everything he's said and done. But there are a group of us (check my blogroll on the left) who have been willing to dig a little deeper to understand what it means to play the long game, keep your eye on the North Star, and see that conciliatory rhetoric can also be a ruthless strategy. Those have been the themes of this presidency that I have come back to over and over again.

Those of you who have stuck with this President know what four more years will bring. We've been willing to fight the lies and distortion on the right throughout this campaign...just as we stood up to the leftist naysayers while he was fighting for every inch of progress over the last four years. From the bottom of my heart - I want to thank you for that.

Part of what has motivated me is that I've been watching politics for a long time now. What we did in electing Barack Obama four years ago was something special. He's the first one to admit that he's not perfect - but what we have in him is an amazingly gifted human being and someone who believes in us as much as he believes in himself. People like that don't come along very often in politics. I've not wanted to miss one moment of these most extraordinary times.

So as we head into the next four years, we know that the right will continue their attacks and the naysayers on the left will return. We'll still be here...fighting with this President for every pragmatic step FORWARD we can gain. I'll be doing that because Barack Obama killed the cynic in me a long time ago.