I'm going to vomit the next time I hear someone say "Where's the beef?" or "There's no there, there" in reference to Senator and Presidential Contender Barack Obama.
I'll grant you this, Barack Obama's experience is not conventional. He hasn't spent the better part of a decade in Washington D.C., he was never the President's wife, and he missed the opportunity to authorize Bush's pet project in Iraq.
I find it difficult to believe that the well-read posters and lurkers at DKos are not aware Barack Obama's rich background, but allow me to remind you, as it seems you may have forgotten...
Barack Obama, a quick resume
As a citizen:
- Has a multi-cultural background. He's black AND white in a society that insists upon things being black OR white.
- Experienced life abroad at an early age.
- Earned an ivy-league degree in INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. (Turns out we're a nation at war in the middle east.)
- Directed a program to help poor families find jobs
- First black president of the Harvard Law Review
- Directed and organized voter registration drives in poor, black DEMOCRATIC Chicago neighborhoods
- Fought for civil, minority and voting rights as an attorney for three years
- Taught constitutional law at U of Chicago
As a state legislator:
- Chairman of HHS
- Authored Earned-Income Tax Credit legislation
- Fought for a program called KidsCare (now called AllKids) which provided myself and my brother with health insurance when I was in high school
- Voted to increase funding for AIDS prevention and care
- Fought to make health insurers pay for mammograms
- Voted to increase regulations on death penalty
- Was a strong proponent of gun control
As a US Senator (109th Congress):
- Sponsored 152 bills in the 109th Congress
- Co-sponsored 427 bills in the 109th Congress
- Wrote a bill to increase Pell grants which never made it out of committee (as a college student, this would have been really great)
- Had an active role in crafting the Kennedy/McCain immigration legislation
- Crafted a bill to disclose federal funding online
- Passed a bill for relief in the Democratic Republic of Congo
As a US Senator (110th Congress):
- Worked with Feingold for tougher restrictions in the Lobbyist reform bill that passed a couple months ago.
- Sponsored a bill to criminalize voter fraud
- Sponsored a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2/3 by 2050
- Wrote the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act" which is eerily similar to the Reid/Feingold bill that's front-paged right now, not to mention the time line included in the appropriations bill that was passed last week.
Before I go any further, let me just say right now that I think Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are great. I will be ecstatic if either of them become the next President of the United States.
That said, while some lawmakers were exercising poor judgment on the floor of the Senate in 2002, Obama was in the streets protesting. Now some of you will cry "But he wasn't in the Senate, he didn't know what they knew, blah Blah BLAH." Hmm... there didn't seem to be any confusion for Dick Durbin, the other Senator from Illinois... or for that matter:
Akaka, Binghaman, Boxer, Byrd, CHAFEE (sidenote: not that I was sad to see him go, but wtf, why'd they dump him?), Corzine, Conrad, Dayton, Feingold, Graham, Inouye, Jeffords, Kennedy, Leahy, Levin, Mikulski, Murray, Reed, Sarbanes, Stabenow, Wellstone and Wyden.
Who's missing from this list?
Clinton, Biden, Dodd and Edwards to name a few.
The people who stood for an hour (of which I am one) in sub-zero temperatures in Springfield when Obama announced his candidacy understand what is special about him.
So do the 20,000 in Houston. The 15,000 in Oakland. As do those who helped Obama raise (speculatively) 22 million dollars in Q1. And he didn't need Bill Clinton to help him with that either.
PEOPLE RESPOND TO BARACK OBAMA. This is what we want, isn't it? I know it's what I want. Someone who can rally the masses to a common cause.
Maybe I was dreaming when I read all of those DKos diaries over the past year BEGGING for our next candidate to relate to voters with a VISION instead of another LAME 10-POINT PLAN.