So...I haven't been around much in the last four years. I used to post pretty regularly during the 2004 election--and for a little while afterwards, but I got depressed and just tuned out of politics altogether for my sanity.
Before I stopped posting on this site, however, I did get one diary up on the rec list--my 15 minutes of fame, if you will. It was this diary:
Leave Obama alone, dammit!
In which I begged you to quit talking madness about our junior senator from Illinois, urging him to run, pinning all our hopes on him. I reasoned that you guys should be a lot more realistic. I think it was a misguided desire to protect Obama from the Republican spin and shred machine that had pulverized Kerry.
Boy, was I clueless. And I've never been so happy to have been so off base in my life. When I returned to look at this old diary, first I cringed, then I chuckled, and then I worried that anyone who clicked on my name might think I was some kind of stealth concern troll and try to hide my comments.
So, anyways, this is my mea culpa, for what it's worth.
I'm sorry I lost hope. On the eve of the 2006 election, I really believed that despite the polls, we were still going to lose, somehow. Actually, I was certain the Republicans would steal the election. I just didn't care anymore. I'd become resigned to the idea that the bad drives out the good. But instead, it turns out that the good, along with truth and brains, can drive out the bad. And that the bad, given enough rope, will hang themselves. Who knew?
Though we know that every inch of that rope was not given voluntarily, but painfully extracted from the innocent--people who have lost jobs, businesses, homes, retirement accounts, everything they owned, neighborhoods, entire cities, basic civil rights, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers...
I'm sorry I didn't think enough of Obama, or know enough about the kind of man he is, to realize just how good and skillful he could be at running a campaign. I guess I just assumed that you couldn't run a successful campaign and be an earnest, smart, intelligent, inherently good person, and since he is definitely the latter, he couldn't possibly be the former. Well, you know what they say about people who assume.
Most of all, though, I'm sorry I didn't have more faith in the progressive movement. It just seemed like the system was stacked against us. But in the time between my departure from this site and my return, it seems like a real revolution in thinking and reacting took place. You guys are whip-smart, and you're dedicated, and you learn from your mistakes. That's not the Democratic Party I've known for so long. This is a new kind of politics.
In my defense, I did recommend that instead of focusing so intensely on Obama, we should try electing Obamas everywhere. Well. You boneheads, you completely misunderstood me. You went and did both.
So congratulations. This is truly one of the happiest nights in my life. Also, this week is my birthday, and this is one of the best birthday presents I ever got. No, scratch that. This is THE best birthday present I ever got. Dr. Tully Monster's gift of a set of really good stainless steel pots and pans a couple years ago will just have to run a close second from here on out. :)
Oh, and I don't think I have much of a future as a political strategist. But I'm not too disappointed about that.