Obama claims victory for his "United States"

Obama thrilled the country at the 2004 DNC when for the first time on the national stage he decried the division of the country into red states and blue states, asserting "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."  Conversely, when he told the country's citizens at the 2012 DNC  that the election in 2008 "wasn't about me...you were the change," some viewed that as a cop-out of sorts: I failed to change Washington, so you do it. Gone were the promises to bridge the red-blue divide himself with the GOP Congress; he wrote them off as dead-enders, and effectively asked the electorate to change Congress by expression of popular will.

Obama's victory speech last night further elaborated the connection between the national unity he has always asserted and the political "change" he seeks. The heart of it came at the end. After telling the tale of a couple whose daughter's leukemia would have cost them everything had Obamacare not kicked in, he said, describing a crowd listening to the father tell his story:

Obama maintains hope, but not in comity

Much of Obama's speech was the same as always: I ran because the American Dream, the "basic bargain," is slipping away; we need to renew our commitment to shared prosperity, opportunity for all; to build sustainable broad-based prosperity by investing in green energy, education, infrastructure; to secure our budgetary future by controlling healthcare costs without denying care. And of course, the other side is about trickle-down, the failed policies of the Bush years, the toxic post-Reagan conviction that government is the problem.

What struck me as different was a subtle bid to tie his opponents to the wholesale corruption of our politics threatened by the unleashing of the Super PACs and the 501(c)(4)s post-Citizens United and Speechnow.org. Democrats have always suggested that Republican policies serve the wealthy.  Obama cast Romney and co. as pretty much owned and bound.

It began at the beginning, with a suggestion of corrupted process that's encompassed him too: