Barack Obama
R2R: Some Day
I shaved my head today. Er... I didn't..my lovely nurse did, I just sat still and bent my head forward whenever she told me. I've never been bald before. I've had short hair, crew-cuttish, but never quite this. It doesn't look too bad actually. I was curious what my skin would look like, if there'd be scars from epic zits from 1999 but no, it's pretty plain.
Also today, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president. He gave a speech tonight and it was electrifying as always. Every time I see him talk I hope he wins even more. He's got a great platform and the charisma to make it happen, not by telling us to do it, but by showing us the way. He's a leader. McCain, Clinton, and the others... they can hold high offices and negotiate with other people in high offices, but they can't inspire masses of citizens to accomplish things beyond mere politics. Obama has that potential. His campaign has shown as much. How that'll translate toward governing an entire country --- and such a country --- is impossible to say, but every indicator is he's our last best chance to cushion the blows we'll be facing over the coming decades.
I concede that last sentence might not sound very hopeful. I wish I could have written, "every indicator is that he's going to usher in a new age of peace and prosperity" but I can't. I see a lot of people with really high expectations for Obama, and he certainly does his best to inspire, but the fact is the country is extremely polarized, the economy is in the crapper, we're locked in a tricky, expensive war with ill-defined objectives and the environment has sustained irreversible damage. I have battles ahead with cancer. Well the country has it tougher. We're not doomed, but we'd be stupid to think this is going to be easy.
Obama Commencement Speech at Wesleyan University
Today Barack Obama gave a commencement speech at Wesleyan University and made some interesting remarks about public service I thought worth mentioning here. This quote caught my eye:
``No one is forcing you to care,'' Obama said. ``You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don't.''
He then went on to talk about how he'll call upon students to "be unified in service to a greater good".
Yeah, kinda sounds like everything that's ever been written at Lose the Label, doesn't it? But it's nice hearing it from somebody who could very well be the next president.
Election Predictions
Where does it go from here? Good places, I think.
Depends on Clinton. I think she wins PA but not by much and bows out. The best case scenario is she leaves gracefully and gets behind Obama {kind of like Romney did McCain, but more strongly}. Bill comes out and campaigns for Obama and the whole Democratic Party reunites. This would be plenty enough resources to pull off one of the biggest landslides in history, and the first strong mandate for liberal ideas in decades.
Obama Speech on Race
Yeah, what he said..
[Posting it because 30 years from now, 8th graders learning about U.S. history will read a paragraph about this speech in their textbooks.]
+1/Obama
Everyone has their own reasons for supporting Obama. I was skeptical about him for a long time, I came around a few months ago. He appeals to my senses of idealism, cynicism, desperation and anger all at the same time. I've grown up watching hideous, bitter partisan deadlock, rampant during the Clinton years and now so much worse under Bush. But somehow I still picked up ideals and taught myself to try hard even when others say it's pointless.
Change
Where does it come from? Does it flow from the top or seep up from the bottom? Is it measured by pieces of legislation, or societal benchmarks, or events, or hearts and minds? What causes it? Anger? Hope? Desperation? Fear? You could answer yes to any of these and be right. The fact is that change is a very amorphous concept. It's difficult to define because there are so many types. We've all noticed how Democratic presidential candidates are falling over themselves to prove how much they can bring. They're doing it because it's the message we want to hear; otherwise, they'd emphasize other things, like John Kerry dwelled on Vietnam and George W. Bush constantly tried to scare us. In other words, our demand for change is driving the narrative of this election. This very desire is significant in itself. What's equally significant is how we express it.
No matter what happens with the nomination, we can take comfort how far we've come as an electorate. The incessant fearmongering and lying of the Bush administration didn't numb and dumb the American people into submission; we rebelled, recognized evil when we saw it and are now trying to fix our mistake. We're using new and evolving tools at our disposal, most notably the Internet, which I'd argue has turned from background noise into a driving force.
Election 2008: Iowa, New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama....... and us
So Hillary beat Obama 39-37 tonight. Stunning upset. Hats off. But there's one demographic she can't seem to reach: us. As in, ages 18-24. Every other age bracket, she's doing fine.
According to CNN exit polls, we broke 60-22 in favor of Obama. That's on top of Iowa where the entrance polls said ages 17-29 went 57-11 in favor of Obama. Those are outright landslides. And boy does it matter --- turnout is up, WAY UP. New Hampshire --- youth turnout DOUBLES. Iowa --- youth turnout TRIPLES. So we have what amounts to a tidal wave of millennial support for Obama; we're seriously the backbone of this guy's campaign right now. How come? There's gotta be a damn good reason, right?
It's because we want change. Yeah, I know, no fuckin duh. There's been a lot of cranky debate about what exactly "change" is lately. Well, I'll take a stab at it: change means not having a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. For example, I was born in 1985, so that means the last time a Bush or Clinton wasn't my president, I was in preschool. Some of you guys around here are '87 and '88 babies... You were in DIAPERS!
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Standard Practice
I saw this article about Michelle Obama going to San Diego to fundraise for her husband. I don't know much about her, but reading through the article made me think of the sad state of campaign finance and the disproportionate amount of attention candidates give to the rich because of their dependence on fat checks.
After he announced his candidacy, Obama held his first official fundraiser here and attracted about $400,000 in contributions. In fact, so impressed was a longtime Republican who hosted the Obama dinner here that he immediately changed his political affiliation to Democrat.