I’d pull the lever for Hillary Clinton for President. Happily. With great satisfaction. In a heartbeat. If she gets the nomination, I’ll pull that lever so hard for her I might break the sucker off in my hand. It’s not just that I admire Clinton, although I do: She has shown enormous tenacity in this campaign in the face of stinging adversity just as she did as First Lady. She’s smart, she’s witty. And when she’s speaking off the cuff, she comes across to me as authentic, warm, as downright charming, as any candidate I've seen.
And the Michigan and Florida revotes? It's easy to come down hard on HRC for trying to pry the rules open and seek some advantage ... especially when you're skeptical of her candidacy. But wouldn't it be great if democrats had shown half her grit during the 2000 Florida recount?
My personal admiration aside, the fact is, she’d make a terrific President. The top issues for me are affordable healthcare and getting out of Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind, and there should be no doubt in yours, that Senator Clinton would address those chief concerns with far greater urgency and effect more equitable solutions than John McCain ever would. Ergo if she wins the nomination, I'll break my back to help her win the Whitehouse because it's in my immediate and direct interests to do so.
On a meta-note, I also deeply admire her supporters here on Daily Kos who soldier on, despite at times intense ridicule and childish rating games. Trolls notwithstanding, and they are manifold, I hope the few Obama supporters who view this nomination process as a fifth-grade cutdown fight and behave the same get it through their heads that, should OB eventually get the nod, not only do they need HRC’s loyal base to win against the well-oiled conservative machine, the Obama campaign would be privileged to have supporters of that caliber.
Those drawn into the tabloid drama beamed into the dinner table conversation show every evening would be well advised to avoid the temptation and instead set to work earning one another's respect and, in some rare cases, forgiveness. For you are going to need each other come November, as surely as this nation needs change, no matter what the outcome in the democratic primary.
Having said that, Obama is now unequivocally my first choice and his speech yesterday was the final determining factor in my calculus. It was beyond refreshing: I have simply never seen a Presidential contender -- much less a sitting President -- so honestly and yet so skillfully negotiate a dense minefield of heretofore taboo topics, any one of which could have blown the candidate and his campaign to bits with single mistep. The news that he reportedly wrote it himself is even more invigorating given that the present occupant of the WH would be hard pressed to conjure up an original limerick and scribble it on a bathroom wall.
Obama did not blame it on the media, or on black or white, he did not shirk responsibility. None of that wearisome Bush era 'no one could have predicted' bullshit. He didn't throw Wright under the bus nor pull him to safety. The tradmed feeding frenzy was not presented as another example of an egregious double standard, although with endless attacks on decency and common sense flowing from right-wing religious leaders that argument could have easily been made, and he did not play the victim.
For Barack Obama it was an opportunity.
Whether the stakes are life or death overseas, prosperity or poverty at home, unity vs. division in the body politic, or the more prosaic minutia of public policy, that’s the skill set that can transcend petty partisan bickering, bypass the mighty smearing wurlitzer, and restore a government that works for All the People, that's the kind of agent I want negotiating for my interests. It's the rare inventiveness and wisdom, so absent for eight long years, that turns adversaries into allies to the benefit of a nation and a people. At the risk of sounding idealistic, if all I knew of a potential nominee from any party was that single speech yesterday, it would be enough. (Update 9:24 AM EST: I should note for purposes of total accuracy that I've been leaning slightly Obama for some time -- DS)
And so, on the fifth anniversary of a war that should never have been fought, it seems an appropriate time as any to stake a claim: I support Senator Barack Obama for President.