Well, I have to say I am really surprised. I never knew that Hillary Clinton had genuine supporters, people that would browbeat you into supporting her candidacy because if she loses, well, she can't lose because her victory is inevitable, right?
I mean why would she have wasted all that time running to be the senator from New York twice, both times against twits, if there was to be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? See, she was destined to have a nice envelope addressed to "President Clinton" from a "President Bush", just as her husband before her.
Because of this feeling of inevitability, plus Hillary's experience in Washington, I originally backed her. Not because I genuinely liked her, and not because I believed what she said, because, let's face it, every Democrat promises us universal health coverage. Go watch clips of Ted Kennedy in 1980. Did Hillary hire his speech writers?
And yet it wasn't until Hillary stood behind her podium in New Hampshire thanking her supporters that I realized that I actually have very little in common with Hillary, and that of all the Democrats running for president, the one I most identified with, most believed in, the one, I dare say, gave me a tiny bit of hope after eight years of Bush and Cheney, is Barack Obama.
The junior senator from Illinois. The one who is a great writer and a great speaker, but has never spent a night at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Say it with me, he has no experience. I repeated this line too to those who questioned my resolute support for Hillary.
And yet, he grew on me. Imagine, a president born in 1961 in, of all places, Hawaii, one that won't drag us through Vietnam again, one that won't drag us down into the mess of the past two decades, of God, guns, faith, abortion -- at each others' throats over the pet issue of the week. A president who spent the Summer of Love as a kid in Indonesia. A person who communicates so well he was able to turn one speech at the convention in 2004 to a landslide victory that fall.
And now he wants to be our president and he wants us all to believe in the "audacity of hope." I realized, after all the times I scoffed at the title, how daring it actually was. "Hope, uh, what's that?" I don't think America's been hopeful about the future for quite sometime. We believe that we'll get through Iraq, but we don't believe we'll be successful. the country feels numb. There's a dark Bush malaise in the air. And some guy wants me to vote for him and believe in hope?
The nerve.
But I couldn't put away that big, "what if?" What if we could take the America of Clinton and Bush and Limbaugh and all the talking heads and discard it. What if this nation could collectively shed its skin? What if the executive was not a mature woman, seasoned by decades of poisonous politics, but a young and energetic man who manages to express an admiration for this country at a time when the public has lost faith in its highest leaders and greatest projects?
The nerve.
And now that I've switched allegiences, that is I'll support Barack Obama on Feb. 5 rather than the iron lady, knowing full well that either way I'll support the Democratic candidate in the end and cross my fingers for eight more Clinton years, I have suddenly been called an "0bamabot" by the Clinton supports because I dare to say that I prefer the junior senator from Illinois to the junior senator from New York.
The nerve.
I'm now a splitter, and the Clinton people think I need a good talking to. And the thing is, the more they talk, the less I like their candidate.
What's an Obamabot to do?