You Have A Choice

I have followed politics for almost my entire life. Over the course of my thirty years, some elections have left more of an impact than others. In 1988, I was in fifth grade and I remember very clearly standing in front of my class passionately appealing to my fellow students to try and convince their parents to vote for George Bush. (Don’t ask. For the life of me I can’t remember why I was so misinformed.) I remember the debates in 1992. Particularly the charts of Ross Perot and his description of the “Giant Sucking Sound” he believed would be the negative effect of NAFTA to jobs in America. (I supported Bill Clinton in that election, but Perot was essentially correct in his analysis of the negative impact of NAFTA when it comes to American manufacturing jobs.) The election of 2000 affected me in ways that I still don’t fully comprehend. In short, 2000 was the year that my innocence and optimism of the electoral process died. Anna still loves to tell the story about how I was so upset by the decision of the Supreme Court in Gore v Bush that I called Chief Justice Rehnquist’s office to express my displeasure despite it being after midnight. (And of course ignoring the fact that I am a nobody and now probably have a file with the FBI.) 2004 was the year I became a cynic and fell into the trap of believing that what works is right. That being pragmatic is more important than being an idealist.

The past thirty years have taught me to be cynical, pragmatic, overly concerned with just winning and generally a byproduct of everything that is wrong with our political system. So here I find myself in the year 2008 and another election is at hand. In my entire life, I have never been given a candidate that speaks truly of hope. That passionately asks us to set aside our partisan differences for the greater good. A candidate that inspires us to be greater than the sum of our parts. A candidate that simply asks us to believe. Today we have been given that candidate in Barak Obama.

But it is hard to shake off the shackles of the past thirty years. Despite the fact that here is a candidate that spoke of peace when the rest of the nation was beating the drums of war. A candidate that spent his early years as an activist trying to show the people their strength while others played the lobbyist trying to manipulate the halls of power.

I say no more. I refuse to allow the system to corrupt me any longer. Today I am going to stand up and say that what is right will work and no longer be deluded into thinking that what will work is right. My support for Obama is more than just an endorsement of the man, but a rejection of the way politics have been played my entire life. I am ready for a change. The nation is ready for a change and together we can make it happen.

I know from looking at the statistics to my blog that I have readers from Kansas, Connecticut, New York, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Illinois and Massachusetts, all which vote a week from today in Super Duper Tuesday. I am personally asking each of you to vote for hope. Over the last seven years we have been manipulated by fear and dishonesty. It is past time to reject these things. On Tuesday you will have a choice.

Sen. Ted Kennedy is far more eloquent than I, so I am going to post his speech of why he is supporting Barak Obama. I am sure that many of you have seen the thirty second clips that they aired in the media, but they do not do justice to his stirring oratory. Please take a few minutes and listen to the entirety of his speech. It recalls a time when politics did not automatically make one pessimistic, as the past thirty years have done to me. Together we can shape our future into something we can be proud when we look back thirty year hence.