Yes he can

Yes he did. Hillary may not yet have conceded defeat, but Senator Barack Obama is going to be the Democrat’s candidate for the US general election in November – and very possibly the next President of the United States.
It is easy to mock politicians. Some are dumb, many arrogant and all have egos – you can’t put yourself forward for election without having some sort of belief in yourself. But they are no more egotistical than newspaper editors, brain surgeons or company CEOs – often less so.
Democracy depends absolutely on the willingness of people such as Senators Obama and Clinton, Jack McConnell, David Cameron et al, to put themselves up for election – and for them to take all the crap that goes with the job.
Imagine trying to stay focussed on doing a decent day’s work while all about you newspaper pundits, bar room sages and anonymous bloggers are making fun of your wife, questioning your honesty and blaming you for the stupidity of your friends. Not easy.
But someone has to do it. If we didn’t have people willing to put themselves and their families through the mill that is universal democratic suffrage, we would be living in a dictatorship.
Back to Senator Obama. It is all too easy to get carried away by his charismatic good looks and his energy, and to believe that maybe, just maybe, the West Wing was fact, not fiction.
It is also hard not to be cynical. I believed Bill Clinton when he talked about a little town called hope, and Tony Blair when he welcomed a new dawn.
Neither got it quite right, but they almost did.
Barack Obama wants to do the right things.
I believe in him when he talks about change and building “a world that's better, and kinder, and more just”.
I am neither naive or stupid.  Just a believer in the power of democracy.

And if we were to stop believing in the power of democracy to change the world for the better, then we stop believing in democracy…