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You know, there is a spirit that brought us here tonight, a spirit of change, and hope, and possibility. And there are few people in this country who embody that spirit more than our friend and our champion, Senator Edward Kennedy.
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He has spent his life in service to this country, not for the sake of glory or recognition, but because he cares, deeply in his gut, about the causes of justice, and equality, and opportunity.
So many of us here have benefited in some way or another because of the battles he's waged and some of us are here because of them. And we know he's not well right now, but we also know that he's a fighter.
And as he takes on this fight, let us lift his spirits tonight by letting Ted Kennedy know that we are thinking of him, that we are praying for him, that we are standing with him and Vicky, and that we will be fighting with him every step of the way.
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You know, 15 months ago, in the depths of winter, it was in this great state where we took the first steps of an unlikely journey to change America.
The skeptics predicted we wouldn't get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out.
But the people of Iowa had a different idea.
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From the very beginning, you knew that this journey wasn't about me or any of the other candidates in this race. It was about whether this country, at this defining moment, will continue down the same road that has failed us for so long or whether we will seize this opportunity to take a different path, to forge a different future for this country that we love.
That's the question that sent thousands upon thousands of you to high school gyms and VFW halls, to backyards and front porches, to steak fries and J.J. dinners, where you spoke about what the future would look like.
You spoke of an America where working families don't have to file for bankruptcy just because a child gets sick, where they don't lose their home because some predatory lender tricks them out of it, where they don't have to sit on the sidelines of the global economy because they couldn't afford the cost of a college education.
You spoke of an America where our parents and our grandparents don't spend their retirement in poverty because some CEO dumped their pension, an America where we don't just value wealth, but we value work and the workers who create it, as well.
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You spoke of an America where we don't send our sons and daughters on tour after tour of duty to a war that has cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, but has not made us safer.
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You spoke of an America where we matched the might of our military with the strength of our diplomacy and the power of our ideals, a nation that is still the beacon of all that is good and all that is possible for humankind.
You spoke of a future where the politics we have in Washington finally reflects the values we hold as Americans, the values you live by here in Iowa: common sense and honesty, generosity and compassion, decency and responsibility.
These values don't belong to one class or one region or even one party. They are the values that bind us together as one country.
That is the country...
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That's the country I saw in the faces of crowds that would stretch far into the horizon of our heartland, faces of every color, of every age, faces I see here tonight.
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You're Democrats who are tired of being divided, but you're also Republicans who no longer recognize the party that runs Washington, and independents who are hungry for change. (APPLAUSE)
You're the young people who've been inspired for the very first time...
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... and those not-so-young folks who've been inspired for the first time in a long time.
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