Hope

I really don't have time for this, you know.  I have all kinds of responsibilities I've been shirking.  I've barely seen my kids this week.  I'm living on coffee, chocolate, bad pizza and adrenaline.  I wouldn't trade this experience for anything.  

Being part of the Obama campaign feels like the most important thing I've ever done in my life.  The stakes couldn't be higher.  And we've gone from nowhere to serious contenders after months of tough, almost invisible work.  Finally, we are seeing the results, we are gaining.  Will it be enough?

In less than 72 hours, the polls close in California.  I've got hope.

What I really love about being a volunteer with the campaign is how our campaign work carries out Barack Obama's core message about politics.  We are empowered.  We are active participants in shaping the future of this country.  We are an energized movement for change.  We are driven by huge numbers of people taking their very first political act, and many others who find their longstanding cynicism shattered by their experience with us.  Elective politics, especially at the national level, isn't supposed to be like this.  I've got hope.

I look at our candidate and I see amazing possibilities.  A progressive Democrat who can draw support from new places and build our party.  Someone who doesn't just have a platform, but a vision. A candidate who aspires to more than winning a single election, but who truly wants to build a broad-based coalition in support of a more activist government.  A President who will call on us to serve the nation and know we will answer that call.  A leader who can help us find our place in the community of nations again.  I've got hope.

I don't know if we're really up or down.  We're beyond polls now.  All the polls really tell us is that what seemed impossible is now at least imaginable.  They tell us the race is fluid - plenty of voters are still making up their minds.  A largely volunteer-based organizing effort in California is up against the establishment and we are making a race of it.  Time to get out the vote.  I've got hope.  

This video uses the Senator's words in New Hampshire in a powerful call to action:

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Hope is the ability to imagine a better future.   Hope sustains us in the fight to realize that vision.  Without hope, change is impossible.  

It turns out hope really is audacious.

Come Tuesday, win or lose, I will know we have already done the unthinkable.  We have brought people from apathy to action on a scale that hasn't been seen in more than a generation.  That isn't going away on February 6  - not by a long shot.  I've got hope.

Support the Obama GOTV efforts in California - sign up for a GOTV activity or phone from home or find ways to get involved across the country.  Yes we can.  I've got hope.

Disclaimer: I am a volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign in California, but when I post here I speak for myself and not for the campaign in any way.  The campaign has had no input on this diary.  The ideas, and all the words in it, are my own.