I tired long ago of spineless Dems. We've taken so much crap for so many years from the criminal, anti-American repugs, I want my Dem candidates to have an "up against the wall, motherfuckers!" attitude toward them. In 2004 Howard Dean was the guy for me. While many stayed silent, Howard stood up and fought back against the bush regime. I love him to this day.
The progressive blogosphere has generally agreed that we want our Dems to be of the fighting Dem variety. We want nothing to do with capitulating, weak-kneed centrists. John Edwards best embodies this spirit. He's carrying on the fight that the working people have fought in this country since the Industrial Revolution. He seems to be running a Dean-like campaign, but much more polished and disciplined (yesterday's ill-advised remark about Hillary notwithstanding). I greatly admire John and the campaign he's been running. He's one of us.
So why the hell is my avatar image at DU of Barack Obama? Isn't he the kind of compromising, conciliatory Dem I'm supposed to oppose? As a matter of fact he is, but...but...but...just a moment, it'll come to me.
Like his positions on the issues sometimes, Barack Obama is a nebulous figure. He seems to be more a concept than a concrete plan of action. But I want to live in a United States of America that has a President Barack Obama. After all the years of mud-wrestling with the repugs, the election of President Obama would feel like a drug addict must feel after finally getting clean, a cleansing of the body, of the mind, and of the soul.
It seems the leading Dem candidates are in general agreement about the major issues, particularly domestically. The question then becomes which will be the most effective in getting things done. Even in much less democratic societies than ours, numbers are power. A president gains power and the ability to institute his policies by being able to persuade the public to go along with him. A popular president advocating popular positions is very difficult to oppose. Obama has shown that he, more than any other candidate, is able to build a large majority coalition to institute progressive policies (yes, he uses the word "progressive," as he did in the debate Saturday night).
Foreign policy is where we would see the biggest difference between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama's willingness to talk with all foreign leaders with no pre-conditions is politically bold and necessary. He genuinely believes in solving problems with dialogue rather than weaponry. In the Preface to the 2004 edition of "Dreams from my Father," when speaking of poverty, 9/11, and the government response, he writes:
I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry... Some fear that Obama is too nice a guy. It takes someone willing to get down and dirty with the repugs to defeat them. The cover story of the current Newsweek speaks at length of Barack's strong unwillingness to mix it up politically. But I think this reputation of his will be his best weapon against the repugs' forthcoming vicious attacks. I don't mean to get too ridiculous with the comparisons, but as with Ghandi or Martin Luther King, the outside-the-lines smear tactics will serve only to demean the attackers in most people's eyes (the Foxtards will, of course, eat it up). Attempting to swiftboat Obama will likely only strengthen him. Also, Barack has a real talent for defusing people's criticisms of him with just a playful little remark.
I think most of us agree Hillary is a talented and formidable politician, with vast resources and people who know how to win and can fight tough when they need to. But...Obama beat them. He and the organization he created and the people to whom he delegated responsibility won Iowa and are continuing to win. But I thought he was the inexperienced one, and they were the people who really understood how the political world works and how to get things done. Then how did they lose? Could it be that their experience is from an old world that is rapidly losing its grip on us?
I'm a white guy living in NYC with my Latina wife and our two teenage sons. Many times I've pointed out to my kids how our city, and increasingly our country and our world is becoming more and more mixed race, rather than clearly defined races. The repugs stand screaming against the tide of history, trying to preserve their idealized white America that never really existed. My kids are probably more politically aware than most kids their age, but they still don't quite get what all the fighting is about, and they are not real eager to jump into the fray. At their very diverse public school everybody gets along really well with everybody else. All the animosity adults carry around is foreign to them. When they first learned of the strong opposition to gay marriage, they were genuinely perplexed. They could not comprehend why anybody else would care if two gay people got married.
I've told my kids that Barack Obama is of my generation, but he seems like he is of theirs. Like JFK, he seems to be the personfiication of the arrival of the future. Some can look back at JFK and argue that he really wasn't all that liberal after all, but it sure seemed like a new day dawning at the time, jump-starting a political and cultural movement that made great advances toward a more progressive and just America.
Though a student of history, Barack Obama seems to elevate beyond it. The battles that have been fought over lifetimes seem to fade into the distance. He must surely realize the ugly shitstorm that awaits him if he is our nominee, but it is a door we all must go through to get to the other side, where a different country awaits us, a country born anew.
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