The following is a message that I sent to Kentucky superdelegates, urging them to support Barack Obama.
To whom it may concern,
My name is (flowrider). (identifying information redacted...) Though I will be willing and able to work through November in support of Sen. Clinton, at this time I am fully and wholeheartedly supporting and encouraging the support of Barack Obama for President of the United States.
Senator Clinton is a respected public servant for whom I would happily vote in November. I believe she has an understanding of the system and will be able to work within it in such a way to "get some things done" if she were elected. This, I believe, is undisputed, but is simultaneously completely beside the point.
The last 7 years in this country have been, I'm sure you will agree, damaging, divisive, and rather difficult for everyone in America. The political divisions that had already been rapidly growing before President Bush took office took a nasty turn. Now, 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. We have lost our faith in politics, abandoning the belief that any candidate, or any party, could heal the wounds we have incurred and finally move the country in the right direction.
Who can unite the country? Who can inspire the country, and bring people together, with pride and hope for the future, to help us all work to fulfill America's promise?
Barack Obama graduated from college with a degree in International Relations. He went straight from school into the poorest neighborhoods in the southside of the Chicago to become a community organizer - he taught people how to band together to change the systems that were holding them down. He helped people learn how to fight for themselves, to stand up together for their own rights and needs. His campaign, with its intense emphasis on small donors, volunteerism, and group action, is a reflection of this.
Already a rising star as the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, Sen. Obama shunned corporate firm offers all over the country to return to Chicago and use his new expertise to continue what he had previously been doing - fight for those who have no voice. He became a civil rights attorney, fighting the 20th century fights against inequality in a city divided. This experience in Civil Rights, and later as a professor of Constitutional Law, is reflected, more poignantly than we have seen in decades, in his amazing and eloquent speech given this past Tuesday concerning race in America. His views toward the inequality that still exists in America, and the attitudes that we all know are oh-so-prevalent in Kentucky, are all-inclusive. But he believes, and I believe, that together we can rise above this bitterness and make America better.
His campaign is a reflection of this inclusiveness. Demographics that have historically voted, including minorities and young people, are demonstrating their power in incredible numbers. Demographics that have never previously voted for Democrats, even registered Republicans, have shown up in amazing numbers to make their voices heard. He has created, already, an unprecedented coalition, across the lines of race, gender, age, and party - an unprecedented coalition that will only grow, that is inspired, and that has shown time and again that they, we, are hungry for change. Starving for it, in fact, and not just in our healthcare system and our foreign policy.
You see, changing our policies isn't enough. We have to change our politics. Despite continued politics-as-usual attacks from all sides, such as the tendency of his opponents to bring up non-stories like the Rezko affair, and the increasingly disgusting attacks concerning race in the previous weeks, Sen. Obama has risen above it all, as evidenced by the speech I referenced earlier. He has not replied to the Clinton campaign's (proven) untrue Rezko assertions with any mention of possible shady fund raising deals by the Clintons in their years of public life. He has not accused anyone of racism throughout this entire terrible ordeal with Geraldine Ferraro and his former pastor. He has, instead, risen above, and dedicated himself further to the formation of a new politics, a politics that FINALLY rejects the appeal to the lowest common-denominator in American society, but instead tries to LIFT the bar, and the discourse, for everyone.
As a young person, I see how my generation views politics. We don't like partisanship. We tend to shy away from any concept that politicians are honest, that they have any intention of helping people, especially people my age. This is understandable - previous generations have mortgaged my future to pay for decades of a Cold War and the development of weapons that can destroy the world a thousand times over. As if we'll need to, after previous generations have done their best to destroy the world all on its own, a problem they have given up on and left for my generation to clean up, most likely too late. And let us not forget - my generation is the generation that is dying every day, that comes home maimed and mentally and emotionally wounded, from deserts far far away. All this after we were the only demographic that wasn't duped by the administration's assertions about weapons of mass destruction. Previous generations made a decision with which a vast majority of MY generation disagreed, and yet we are the ones who, in the largest numbers, are literally dying because of it. Why should we trust politicians?
And yet, here we are, lined up in droves in universities across the country to hear one person speak, someone who actually inspires us, someone whom we believe is honest, fair, and noble, and who we believe has the ability, and the desire, to finally end these trends I referenced.
Sen. Clinton would make an excellent president, I'm sure. And she' is an excellent politician.
I don't just want an excellent president, however. I want to be inspired again, to see this excitement in the faces of my peers continue, to grow, and affect some of the greatest change in the way our country works that we have ever seen.
For this reason, I am strongly urging you, as superdelegates to the Democratic Convention, to support, promptly and wholeheartedly, the candidacy of Barack Obama for President of the United States.
Thank you,
(flowrider)