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I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. . . I'm asking you to believe in yours.
* * * * *
I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the
cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the
words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling
immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.
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We are the people we've been waiting for. We are the change we
seek.. . . We are the hope for the future, the answer to the cynics who
tell us that our house must stand divided, that we cannot come
together, that we are not the ones who can make this world the way it
should be.
-Barack Obama, Feb 5 2008
Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. It is so refreshing to be rooting for someone rather than just against the greater of two evils.
Many of my female friends are incensed that I'm not supporting Hillary, but voting for a woman simply because she's female is just as bad as voting for a man simply because he's male. I don't like Hillary Clinton. I don't like her policies, I don't like her double-speak, and I don't trust her to bring real change to our ailing government. She is not my candidate. Barack Obama is, and he has been ever since he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
I've been mulling over how best to articulate what it is about Obama that I find so inspiring, but ultimately I've decided simply to quote the words of others who have expressed my feelings perfectly.
From Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Making Light:
I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested,
it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for
progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the
right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes
naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be
another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of
knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might
actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create
room and space for real change.
Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important,
something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this
country, in this time: how to hearten people. Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.
That’s not enough. But it’s something. It’s a real something. It’s a start.
From Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings:
. . . people often wonder whether Obama's call for a new kind of politics
is just empty words. Here again, I think he has a real record to point
to. He has consistently worked for ethics reform. In Illinois, where he
helped pass what the WaPo
called "the most ambitious campaign reform in nearly 25 years, making
Illinois one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure."
In the US Senate, he was the Democrats' point man on ethics, and was
deeply involved in the ethics legislation passed this year. He didn't
get all he wanted -- for instance, he and Russ Feingold couldn't get a
bill establishing an Office of Public Integrity to deal with
Congressional scandals. But he accomplished a lot, and wants to
accomplish more.
Moreover, he is very interested in open government. The searchable
database of government grant and contract recipients that I mentioned
above is part of that. But Obama's proposals (pdf) go further.
And finally, from Wil Wheaton of WWdN: In Exile:
We've been afraid for too long, and it's cost us dearly. Karl Rove
and George Bush and Dick Cheney will have many disastrous legacies, but
one of the most despicable and enduring will be how they used fear to
deeply and deliberately divide our country.
It's going to be a huge challenge for our next president to heal
this nation, and end the Culture of Fear that's been created by the
Bush Administration. I believe that Barack Obama is the best candidate
to do that, and I was proud to vote for him today.
C'mon California... why aren't you on the Obama bandwagon yet?
