I cast my vote Friday. My partner and I weren't sure we'd make it back to town Tuesday in time for the "might be counted, might not" Florida primary, so we early-voted. It was the most difficult voting decision I've ever made. Maybe I know too much.
I held great hope for Edwards, and I gave him chance after chance. We went to see him in Miami early in the campaign. We expected to be energized but we left his presence disillusioned and almost angry. He was late for the event, he gave an uninspired short stump speech, and apparently did little or nothing to reach out to minorities. In a crowd of several hundred--in MIAMI--I could count the Hispanics on my fingers.
He didn't seem on a track to win. He didn't seem to understand that if that crowd was representative of his supporters, he wouldn't carry this state. I needed another candidate, and I went on a search that I'll tell you about on the other side.
We'd missed a Kucinich event almost in our own backyard, just a few days before, so I didn't have the chance to see him. But it didn't take but a week or so to realize that his strategy was to offer everything to everybody. Jonathan Capehart, during the Logo debates, asked him if there was anything the gay community wanted that he wasn't for. It was snarky but true and it went to the heart of why Dennis Kucinich isn't the answer.
Then there was Dodd, whose stature rose with his opposition to telcom immunity. He's a great candidate, but I didn't see him as a winning one. I hope he can find a home as Senate Majority Leader. He has the spine for it.
There's Biden, who won my respect but not my vote. We don't all agree on the war, and I trust Biden when he stands by his war vote. He's principled, but I think he's wrong and I've had enough wrong.
There was Richardson. The "gay is a choice" wasn't a deal-killer for me, but his damage control was. Being ignorant of the latest research on origins of homosexuality wasn't the problem. Not recognizing that you put your foot in shit halfway to your knee until the next day was the problem. He's Secretary of State material. He'd be a great one. But he's not a president.
Hillary was never a consideration. Love Bill, but he was a man for his times, those times have passed, and Hillary, you're no Bill Clinton. And as you told us, Bill isn't the one standing here. I'll vote for you if you're the nominee, but your negatives, your war record, your corporate Democratic positions and the people in your political machine all turn me off.
Obama never convinced me he had a well thought out course, beyond just "bringing everybody together," which is why the populist message of Edwards, at least on paper, always resonated with me, which is why after dating all the candidates, I came back to my John. But lets face facts. Edwards isn't going to be the candidate. If we'd been able to vote on election day, we could have postponed our defection until we saw how he did in South Carolina, but we couldn't.
So we went for Barack Obama, because he can win, he can motivate, and boy, howdy, can he give a speech. The question whether a black man can win didn't trouble me at first. It did only when some in the black community expressed reservations. Shouldn't they know better than me?
But Barack long ago convinced me otherwise Well, Barack and the guy who wrote the liner notes for the premiere of the opera about Harvey Milk in Houston in 1995. He talked about the opera's two authors. About how the straight guy convinced the gay guy to be bold and direct in his staging. The gay community didn't need an apology, it needed an accurate portrayal. Sometimes our own communities are the last to see the tipping point.
So I forgot about race, not that we won't be baited into making it an issue. Hell, the people we least expected would do it have already done it. Anybody who votes against Barack because he's black would have already rejected him for a thousand reasons. It was never personal to me. It was always how race would affect somebody else...at least until I got into the polling booth.
When I cast my vote for Barack Obama, I was suddenly overcome with emotion. There have been black candidates before, even on the Republican side, but they were protest votes and kingmaker maneuvers. But this man actually has the potential to win, to become the first black president in our 220 years.
My partner, who was voting in another booth several yards away, told me afterwards that he felt precisely the same way. And tonight, seeing Barack overwhelm South Carolina, and deliver a speech that, like Iowa, took me back to the days of the Kennedys and the Kings, I know we made the right choice.
We can make history. The future feels like it did once before in my life, a long time ago. Iowa wasn't a fluke, we can make this happen again and again. We can make it happen enough we can take this country back, we can make our people believe again, and we can show the world that no matter what you've done as a nation, you can chart a course to regain the high moral ground.