I love the passion of John Edwards, and I fully support everything he says. But John Edwards is not catching fire with the voters, and he will play only a minor part in the selection of our candidate.
I never thought I would live long enough to see a woman as a real competitor for the office of President, and I really wanted to support Hillary Clinton. But I do not want a co-Presidency, and I have always been very disturbed by Ms. Clinton's deep ties to business, and her vote on both Iraq, and Iran.
I also remember Camelot. I cast my first vote for John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I lived the belief in a Better America. I participated in the reach for the stars, and the thrill of feeling that I was a part of something bigger, and more profound, than my prosaic concerns.
I have mourned the loss of those times for all of the nearly 50 years since. I want them back.
I know every screwup, every failure and every astonishing success of the Kennedy years. Not through reading opinion, or history, or spin, but through the observations of a politically aware young woman who wanted to participate in the kind of democracy that she had learned about in her civics classes.
I worked for Bobby in California. I cheered when I heard the vibrant promise of a return to those giddy days of possibility. I died a little when Bobby died. And, I have never quite shed the cynicism, and anger that assassination left with me.
A new awakening came the first time I really listened to Barak Obama when he gave his address after the Iowa caucus. My eyes filled with tears. Those long dormant feelings stirred. That old feeling of hope and promise reemerged. I was stunned, and surprised, and caught off guard; this old women who had fallen into such dispair was awakened to a new beginning of shared purpose.
I began to pay VERY close attention.
I heard soaring rhetoric and a return to the glories of spoken English; not something to be lightly dismissed.
I have seen thousands of young folks reacting in the same way that I remember from my youth.
I know that the evils of the past 30 years have been an abberation, but like so many I could never see a way out of the trap of manipulating the ignorant, and ill informed. The triangulation that separated us into labled groups that were beaten like a drum, to resonate so loudly that the back room dealings were shielded from public hearing.
I've done my homework. Visited the web sites, read the policy papers, and now I'm ready to decide.
No Administration will ever be perfect. No collection of human beings, pulled by competing interests and beliefs, will ever fufill our every wish, or dream. I will settle for a Progressive Democrat that inspires hope, and mobilizes people to transcend the past 30 years to join in a massive recovery effort to get our country back.
Barack Obama is my candidate.