Let me finish tonight with this.

I said it before and am now saying it again.

There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills - even now - tens of millions of others.

They hate not just his politics but him.

Think about all the days we have known him - from way back when he gave that breathtaking speech at the 2004 convention? Was there ever a time in all those days and weeks and months and years since that his haters on the right have stopped in their tracks and said, “Well, good for him. I liked the way he did that.”

Think hard. Have his haters ever stopped hating him?

When we got Bin Laden?

When the stock market doubled, doubling very 401K, making all those haters richer - twice as rich - as they were when Bush left us stranded with a dropping, scary economy? Did they ever look up and say, even hesitantly, “Well, I’ll give him this one?”

No.

No.

No.

You can discount it all. You can say it’s not about race or whatever. You can say it, but …

Think about this. In all the criticisms you’ve heard the haters say about African Americans all the years of your life - and think about this man’s life - about how hard he worked at school, how he achieved so highly at school, how he married so well and so faithfully, how he’s fathered two great daughters and kept them, protected them, been a truly great father to them, be a true partner in his marriage, treated his office with such respect and dignity - has never once let us down with his personal behavior and yet ….

They hate him. They really do and I don’t have to be the one to tell you.

We live in a country where a good chunk of the country hates its elected leader and won’t really - I mean really- tell you why.

It’s the same reason they spend their time thinking of clever gimmicks to keep so many people from voting. Anybody disagree?