Ta-Nehisi Coates posts video of Paul Wellstone’s last speech on the floor of the Senate on the occasion of the six-year anniversary of the former senator’s death. Wellstone was famous for being, by conventional metrics, among the most liberal members of the US Senate.

In his final speech, Wellstone made a case against the invasion of Iraq at least as analytically and emotionally persuasive as any that an American of comparable political stature ever made — more compelling than any such case from any comparable figure that I ever heard (including Barack Obama’s famous 2002 anti-war speech). Watch the video and then tell me that the nation, the world, or whatever community your life is centered on, is on balance better off because the vacuous Bush rubber-stamper Norm Coleman now occupies Wellstone’s office.