Uniting The House Divided: Don't Gloat

Just a brief note on the day Obama clinches the nomination.

Barack Obama announced his run for the Presidency from the steps of the Old State Capital Building in Springfield, Illinois. It was in the very same building, a century and a half ago, that a congressman named Abraham Lincoln said the following:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Lincoln was talking about slavery, about the Nebraska bill that would extend slaveholding to states in the west and even the northwest as they joined the union. But the message could just as easily apply to the Democratic Party now, on the day Barack Obama has stepped into history himself.

A Democratic Party divided will not stand. We will all need to pull together to unify the party or else we'll simply hand the White House over to yet another four years of pillage by the Republicans.

And here's my part. Hillary Clinton ran a good, hard race, energized a lot of voters, and she showed us how to hang tough when the odds are against you. A lot of good people supported her, wise and caring people who knocked themselves out for what they believe.

Today is not a day to gloat, and not a day to attack Hillary Clinton. Today is a day to say to all Democrats: thank you for all your hard work during this long, long campaign, and now is the time to do what America so desperately needs us to do: defeat the Republican, conservative machine before the damage they inflict on our country, our economy, our Constitution, our courts becomes irreversible.

To Hillary's supporters: I'll be proud to walk side by side with you as we turn the White House blue.