A Look Back: Barack Obama addresses delegates at the 2004 DNC

President Barack Obama is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night. Obama will take the stage 12 years after he first came to national attention as a freshman senator from Illinois at his party's 2004 convention.

Ostensibly, Obama was there to endorse Massachusetts senator John Kerry for his White House bid. But it's best remembered as the launching-point of Obama's own run four years later.

John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it's not enough for just some of us to prosper, for alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we're all connected as one people. If there is a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me even if it's not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs and are having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent.

If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, and yet still come together as one American family. "E pluribus unum;" "out of many, one."

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us; the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight there is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America.

The pundits -- the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states, red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too: we worship an awesome God in the blue states and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end -- in the end -- in the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope.

John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here, the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or a health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young Naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too. (

Hope -- hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope. In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen; a belief that there are better days ahead. I believe that we can give our middle class relief, and provide working families with a road to opportunity. I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair. I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs, and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.

America, tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do, if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness, a brighter day will come.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you.