I think I have decided. Yeah...I've been all over the place. Kucinich most closely matches my personal beliefs. Well, he never had a shot and he's out anyway. Richardson impressed me the most as an experienced statesman. But he could barely raise enthusiasm even with an almost awed Jon Stewart soft balling him on the Daily Show. Richardson perhaps was the BEST person to be President...but possibly the worst candidate.
John Edwards almost got me. I like his focus on poverty, his speech at Pace University on foreign policy [1], and I figured he fit the mold of people who win as Democrats: young, charismatic with a hint of sexuality about him. But he failed even to take his own birth state and I can't say I ever became ENTHUSIASTIC about him.
Now, one thing that I am pleased as punch about is the fact that it is almost certain that the Democratic primary will nominate either a woman or a black. The white guys couldn't get out of the starting gate with any momentum. The first states to caucus/primary aren't exactly the hot beds of progressivism, at least on the surface. Yet they each favored either the black guy or the woman...often the white guy came in third. As a phenomenon, and given that all three are competent, intelligent people who would be good Presidents, I think it is well worth feeling good about that. For most of my life that could NEVER have happened.
In that sense I think Joe Lieberman was a turning point. I know we hate the guy since he started kissing Bush's ass, but a proudly orthodox Jew WON as Vice President (certainly the popular vote and quite probably the electoral vote had it been done right) with scarcely a ripple of people freaking out over it. Sure, Kennedy broke the Protestant hold on the Presidency, and Joe only made VP and he never got to take office and he has turned to the dark side. But...Joe Lieberman's election as VP with a record number of popular votes strikes me as the moment America realized that it didn't HAVE to be prejudiced when it voted. It was then that questions like "Are we ready for a [fill in any non- (wealthy, white, male, protestant) you like] President?" started to sound hollow and make more and more people think, "Well, yeah I think we are!"
We won't know until we try, of course. But it is looking to me like Americans are now willing to admit for the first time that we as a nation have been ready to have a black or a Jew or a woman or a Latino as our leader for some time...we were just too busy wondering if we were ready to REALIZE we were ready. Can the Republicans use racism and sexism to beat a black or woman candidate? Sure they can. And I PROMISE you they will try in every way they can. The Democrats had better do a better job of standing up to it than they did when the Republicans Corkered Harold Ford, jr. in Tennessee in 2006. The REpublicans will be JUST as disgusting in 2008 as they were in 2006 and we had better be ready to fight it, but I also think Americans are starting to realize racism and sexism is a bit outdated. Now is very likely the year.
If it was still a 3 or 4 person race, maybe, just maybe, I would still be undecided. But as it is now coming down to two candidates, I think I am deciding.
My wife and I are leaning opposite ways. My wife is increasingly finding herself liking Hillary. Keep in mind, my wife is more liberal than I am. But I think it is a gut level thing (which really is what politics is all about). She thinks Hillary is the one who is most capable and most able to stand up to the inevitable sleaze attacks the Republicans are going to throw at her. In fact, she has heard it all and already deflected it. My wife put it well when she said, "If she wasn't such a hawk, I'd have no problem supporting her."
I, too, have been warming to Hillary...albeit reluctantly. Her vote against the censorship of MoveOn.org (when Obama chose to be absent) and her standing up publicly for Daily Kos helped. Basically I feel ready to work for her if she is the nominee. There is enough common ground, and the possibility of finally having a woman President long after places like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Liberia have had woman leaders makes me ready for President Hillary. That said, I am still not thrilled with many of Hillary's stands over the years and remember she is my Senator.
Obama also has struck me as a tad too conservative for my tastes. But there is one thing I have been seeing about Obama that does impress me. He is bringing in so many new people to the political process it is amazing. In this sense Obama is building on what Howard Dean began. Howard Dean inspired people who had never been inspired by politics before. Now Obama is renewing and expanding that amazingly. It is Obama's charisma (as well as, at least in New Hampshire, Hillary's more mainstream ground game) that is responsible for the amazing, record turnouts for the Democrats in every primary and caucus states so far. If turnout so far is any indication, the Republicans are in trouble even in South Carolina, where Obama alone got more votes than the entire Republican voter turnout. Amazing, if you ask me.
I first noticed Obama's ability to pull in new Dem voters when a friend of ours who was a Green (but we like her anyway!) re-registered Dem specifically to support Obama. Obama had inspired a Green who had in 2000 voted Nader and gotten her to become an active Democrat. I took note of that.
Then there was a little incident a friend campaigning for Obama in Brooklyn related to me. I got her to write it up for Culture Kitchen here [2]. Obama was inspiring minorities in a way that I don't think America has seen since the years of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, jr. Obama was, to many, not just a politician, good or bad, win or lose...but was an outright inspiration. Very, very few Democratic candidates for President have been inspiring, which has been one of our main problems for years. Republicans are more willing to vote for an uninspiring suit if that suit simply repeats their mantra, "tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts" over and over. Democrats are more fickle. They need someone who gets them excited before they will put out in the voting booth. Obama does it for many who otherwise would stay home.
Then there was a co-worker of mine, a Latino student at NYU. He had only a passing interest in politics, perhaps more than the average American, but not very informed or interested. He went to hear Obama speak at NYU and was blown away. He couldn't stop talking about it. The INSPIRATION he had experienced was palpable.
It's all about the inspiration. The ability to inspire not only gets out the vote (as it has in Iowa and South Carolina, and even in New Hampshire and Nevada where turnout was also record high and Obama did quite well), but also makes a good leader. The ambivalence many feel towards Hillary would be a detriment to her leadership DESPITE her great intelligence and capabililty. Obama is also intelligent and capable, but he also inspires in a way that few politicians ever can aspire to. So what if this was something he learned to do...he developed this charisma after his early, failed years in politics. It is no less genuine for being learned. The passion behind it is real, even if the techniques were cultivated. Obama has the right mix of characteristics to win and lead. In this way he reminds me, of all things, of Bill Clinton.
Right now, Barack Obama leads in terms of delegates picked up from voters and caucus goers. But Hillary leads when superdelegates are factored in. Obama will have a hard time winning, I think. My money is on Hillary winning. But I intend to vote for Obama since even if he doesn't pick up the nomination, the enthusiasm he generates along the way will boost Howard Dean's legacy a hundredfold. If the left takes advantage of this the way it absorbed the Dean revolution, we will do very well in the next decade or so. If not, well a return to the Clinton years wouldn't be all that bad after the Bush nightmare. But it wouldn't be as inspiring as what we would get from an Obama presidency.
My wife leans Hillary. I lean Obama. We both consider Hillary, Obama and Edwards all very similar when you get below the surface. I am not sure how different their three presidencies would be. But the ability of Obama to inspire impresses me and is something the left really needs. Too long has the left been typified by wonderful but uninspiring people like Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Paul Simon, Senator John Kerry, Congressman Dennis Kucinich...people who would have been excellent administrators of our nations, but lacked the inspiration, the spark, to truely lead. Howard Dean had something of it, but there always was something a bit difficult about him for many. The set of his jaw, the stiff neck...all limited his appeal in the end. He COULD have done it, but he didn't quite make it. Obama has developed a charisma that is easy to absorb. And it shows in the voter turn out and in the fundraising. And those, my friend, are what win elections.
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