Speaker

The speaker of the speech is Barack Obama. Today we know Barack Obama as the former US President who held office between 2009 and 2017 and was the first African American to hold that office in the US. However, at the time of his announcement speech, 2007, Barack Obama was an Illinois senator; therefore, he was not a prominent political figure, but a relatively young and little-known senator.

Barack Obama is a member of the US Democratic Party, one of the two most important political parties in the US. The Democratic Party’s present orientation and ideology are liberal and progressive, often oriented towards social (left-wing) policies such as progressive income tax, higher corporate taxes, or national programs that are financed by government spending.

At the time of the speech, Senator Barack Obama wanted to become the Democratic Party nominee for US President. To achieve this, he needed to win the primary elections by competing only with other Democratic Party members that enlisted as candidates.

Because he did not have a well-known public image, an important part of his speech focuses on presenting himself to the audience—on giving them relevant background information about himself, aimed at establishing him as a worthy and credible political candidate: “I moved to Illinois over two decades ago. I was a young man then, just a year out of college; (…) But a group of churches had ...