To the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics -- the best -- the best ever -- some of you were new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the very beginning. This is what Barack Obama said in his victory speech after his re-lection as the president of the United States on Wednesday.
And he could not thank them enough. A day after his re-election, Obama visited his campaign headquarters
in the Prudential Building near Lake Michigan before returning to the White House.
The president got emotional as he spoke to his staff at his campaign headquarters in Chicago, he even momentarily cried.
He told the campaign team that their work organising his vast ground operation reminded him of his time as a community organiser in Chicago when he was their age.
"It's not that you remind me of myself; it's that you're so much better than I was. You're smarter and you're better organised and you're more effective," he said in a five-minute clip posted on the campaign's YouTube channel. "What Bobby Kennedy called the 'ripples of hope,' when you throw a stone in the lake, that's you."
Wiping away tears and amid applause the president added that he felt he had come "full circle
because what you guys have done means the work that I'm doing is important. And I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of all of you."