A Fresh Start ( from the bottom up)

I found it such a relief to sit and listen to the words of our new president. There was so much clarity in his speech, and as I have had time to think about it I am glad that it lacked much of the flourish that his other speeches contained. It seemed more real and true, as though his performance before was meant to inspire and gather but what he presented today was to lead and really direct the country's focus.

I read an op-ed in the New York Times today and it spoke of how Obama has reshaped the Democratic party. I am not so sure about that. One problem that the Democrats have had is that they have anomalies like Obama. To a lesser extent we had this same type of mutation with Bill Clinton, but overall, I think that there is not a dogma that our party builds itself upon. I think in this way it is harder to pin us down, and I know that part of this exists because we have many more "surface" ambitions than the Republican party. I am in fact cautiously excited to see whether there are some general traits that can be gleaned from what is hopefully a successful presidency that can be applied to our party as a whole. I am not talking in terms of strategy, but ideals that we can use to unite our ideas across many different levels of government.