Why I'm Supporting OBAMA
I caucused for Obama on Tuesday. I love to caucus! Throw out the voting machines! It feels like your doing something secret and shameful behind that curtain in the voting machine. Hmm...that's an idea. Nevermind! Anyway, at the caucus you get to talk politics with people for two hours and you actually get the feeling that you're doing something. We were also all in a very large cattle pen which was very cool, and very Kansas.
I was trying to convince my neighbor to abandon the Edwards camp and join the mass of Obama supports, when two Clinton supports tried to influence me to join them. It’s funny because I agreed with everything those Clinton supporters were saying: Bill and Hillary, together, presided over one of the greatest economic expansions in US history, reduced the deficit, created a budget surplus and stabilized social security. But, they also signed and campaigned heavily for NAFTA (literally, millions of manufacturing jobs were lost), deregulated the banking industry (the sub-prime mortgage collapse), the utility industry (ENRON) and the stock market (the Tech bubble, Worldcom, TYCO and others). They abandoned Al Gore and the Kyoto global climate change treaty, and turned the Democratic party into a corporate financed machine that could compete financially with republicans, but could only win elections on the coasts and had no room for grassroots organizers or progressive agitators like Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards.
I’m supporting Obama because I believe he understands that he can’t make the changes our country (our planet!) needs on his own, that he needs to enlist Americans in a purpose higher than shopping and inspire us to something greater than fear. I’ve seen young voters engaged in this process in a way I’ve never seen before, and corporate influence and money effectively pushed aside and exposed as a limited source for both fundraising and building political coalitions. Sen. Clinton has had to dig into her own pockets for 5 million dollars in the last couple of weeks, while Sen. Obama has raised more than 7 million dollars since Tuesday (in 36 hours!) from small donors and families. In short, I am supporting Barack Obama because I believe he is actually supporting this important attempt to take back the Democratic party and our government, and when he is elected he will be indebted to working families, community organizers, progressives and young people and not Walmart, Pfizer or United Health Care.
In the end, I brought my neighbor over. The Clintons are still holding out.
I was trying to convince my neighbor to abandon the Edwards camp and join the mass of Obama supports, when two Clinton supports tried to influence me to join them. It’s funny because I agreed with everything those Clinton supporters were saying: Bill and Hillary, together, presided over one of the greatest economic expansions in US history, reduced the deficit, created a budget surplus and stabilized social security. But, they also signed and campaigned heavily for NAFTA (literally, millions of manufacturing jobs were lost), deregulated the banking industry (the sub-prime mortgage collapse), the utility industry (ENRON) and the stock market (the Tech bubble, Worldcom, TYCO and others). They abandoned Al Gore and the Kyoto global climate change treaty, and turned the Democratic party into a corporate financed machine that could compete financially with republicans, but could only win elections on the coasts and had no room for grassroots organizers or progressive agitators like Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards.
I’m supporting Obama because I believe he understands that he can’t make the changes our country (our planet!) needs on his own, that he needs to enlist Americans in a purpose higher than shopping and inspire us to something greater than fear. I’ve seen young voters engaged in this process in a way I’ve never seen before, and corporate influence and money effectively pushed aside and exposed as a limited source for both fundraising and building political coalitions. Sen. Clinton has had to dig into her own pockets for 5 million dollars in the last couple of weeks, while Sen. Obama has raised more than 7 million dollars since Tuesday (in 36 hours!) from small donors and families. In short, I am supporting Barack Obama because I believe he is actually supporting this important attempt to take back the Democratic party and our government, and when he is elected he will be indebted to working families, community organizers, progressives and young people and not Walmart, Pfizer or United Health Care.
In the end, I brought my neighbor over. The Clintons are still holding out.