Stepping Into Change
"If we won, I thought, it would mean that my U.S. Senate campaign hadn't just been dumb luck.
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"If we won, it would mean that what had led me into politics wasn't just a pipe dream, that the America I believed in was possible, that the democracy I believed in was within reach.
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"If we won, it would mean that I wasn't alone in believing that the world didn't have to be a cold, unforgiving place, where the strong preyed on the weak and we inevitably fell back into clans and tribes, lashing out against the unknown and huddling against the darkness.
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"If these beliefs were made manifest, then my own life made sense, and I could then pass on that promise, that version of the world, to my children.
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"I had made a bet a long time ago, and this was the point of reckoning. I was about to step over some invisible line, one that would inexorably change my life, in ways I couldn't yet imagine and in ways I might not like. But to stop now, to turn back now, to lose my nerve now—that was unacceptable.
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"I had to see how this whole thing played out." — Barack Obama; A Promised Land, p. 78
Friedrich Kunath
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