Obama to Reflect on Win at Home This Weekend
Thursday, June 5th, 2008So what’s different since Tuesday on the Obama campaign?
“Not much, here I am with you guys,” Barack Obama said with a laugh to reporters on board his campaign plane.
Just two days after securing the Democratic nomination, Obama was in the semi-regular position of taking questions from his traveling press corps on a flight following a fairly standard town hall in southwest Virginia, and heading to a fairly standard rally in Northern Virginia.
But this election is far from standard as Obama is the nation’s first African American to sit atop of a major party’s ticket for president. According to the history-making man, he’s been too busy to fully appreciate the win. “It hasn’t sunk in - we’ve been going at a pretty fast clip,” he shared.
Following his rally tonight, he’ll try to take it in this weekend at home with his family — no public events, according to his schedule.
“I intend to take the weekend off and I am going to take my wife out on a date. I hope to go on a bike ride with my kids and my sense is at some point this weekend I will have the opportunity to reflect on the journey we’ve traveled - and that will I think help me chart a course for where we are going to go…over the next five months,” he told reporters, many of whom also eager to have some down time as well.
A reporter wondered if Obama would savor his victory this weekend. The candidate who often says this election isn’t about him, but the people replied, “I think this weekend is to just savor my family, think back to the hard work we’ve put in and to think that now find ourselves in a position to really change the county and I promised. The one thing I can tell you that I feel an enormous obligation to the people who I’ve met during the course of this year, year and a half. The single mom without health insurance, the guy who lost his job and lost his health care and pension. They tell you during the course of the campaign, they are counting on you, they believe in you and I take that very seriously so we’ve got a lot of work to do, and that’s why there’s not a bunch of lot of self congratulatory moments right now, we’ve got work to do.”
He may have a little help on the campaign trail this fall. When asked if Obama would utilize former President Bill Clinton on the campaign trail - despite several stumbles during the primary, despite serveral contentious moments between the two - Obama simply replied, “Yes. I think Bill Clinton is an enormous talent, and I would welcome him campaigning for me.”
