twister hit a neighborhood in queens. president obama is taking his post-convention to the battleground in florida. his opponent mitt romney is in virginia. he is holding a ral did i ly in virginia beach right now. now back to barack obama: making history. barack obama s journey to his inauguration in january 2009 took the same route to washington as abraham lincoln in 1861. watch the big step! the vice president-elect boarded the train in wilmington, delaware, and reflected on the race riots he had witnessed from the same spot 40 years earlier. part of the city was burned down after dr. king was killed. and the train station was occupied by the national guard. and here i am, thinking, my god, anything is possible, man. anything is possible.
world looks america, but also the way we look at ourselves. he was electric throughout the world. when you looked in that audience and you saw people with tears in their eyes, you knew this was more than just an ordinary election. the night he won was the biggest moment as a nation. it was a tearjerker. it was both the joy of the moment and the journey. the journey really began in the 17th century when the first african slaves were brought into virginia, and then the 19th century brought the first blow to justice, the american civil war ending slavery. in the mid-20th century, the struggle for american rights brought african-americans an equality under the law. now 45 years after martin luther king s march on washington, full equality was one step closer to reality. for those who had devoted their lives to this cause, the moment was bittersweet.
stop cap and tax. meanwhile, across the country, a new political force was mobilizing, the tea party movement, who aimed to push the government further to the right. stop spending money, now. in the 2010 midterm elections, the republicans, many backed by the tea party, won the house and weakened the democrats in the senate. most of these freshmen came to washington now, not to meet and negotiate, but to demolish a government they saw as bloated, rotten, tyrannical. the reason we came here, the new freshmen here, is because the american people said, enough. can you hear us now? can you hear us now? sometimes the opposition to the president took an uglier, even racist tone. false claims first heard during the campaign reemerged, questioning obama s religion, denying he was born in the country. he is not an american citizen! he is a citizen of kenya! did it surprise you that at
when they got to washington, more than a million people crowded on to the national mall. they had come to witness the inauguration of the country s first black president. hundreds of millions watched from afar, yes, in awe at the history being made. i, barack hussein obama, do solemnly swear but even as the new president took the oath, the grand expectations of this historic occasion were clashing with the fierce urgency of the challenges. starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking america. probably no one since roosevelt has entered office with that sense of crisis, that sense of burden. the problems waiting for him on the oval office desk included two wars, a broken health care system, an economy on the verge of collapse, millions facing foreclosure, a jobless rate
stop cap and tax. meanwhile, across the country, a new political force was mobilizing, the tea party movement, who aimed to push the government further to the right. stop spending money, now. in the 2010 midterm elections, the republicans, many backed by the tea party, won the house and weakened the democrats in the senate. most of these freshman came to washington now, not to meet and negotiate, but to demolish a government they saw as bloated, rotten, tyrannical. the reason we came here, the new freshman are here, is because the american people said, enough. can you hear us now? can you hear us now? sometimes the opposition to the president took an uglier, even racist tone. false claims first heard during the campaign reemerged, questioning obama s religion, denying he was born in the country. he is not an american citizen! he is a citizen of kenya! did it surprise you that at