Like almost everyone here, politics has been a hot topic at my house this campaign season. While I've been a registered Democrat for my entire voting career, I changed to Unaffiliated last year after watching the House and Senate cave, yet again, to the idiot in the White House. No impeachment proceedings, continual funding of the war...I was so angry I decided that I wasn't going to be listed on their voter rolls anymore. Not that my ideals had changed, I was just sick of getting mail from the people who kept ignoring the Constitution.
My beloved, on the other hand, has been a registered Republican for his entire voting career, his mom even worked to help get Reagan elected. He too, switched to unaffiliated last year because he couldn't stand to support, even if only on a voter registration card, the "party of asshats" as he likes to call them.
So we've been watching the entire campaign season, wavering between optimism and pessimism, hoping for the best and expecting the worst, and viewing both the Republicans and Democrats with a jaundiced eye.
Until yesterday. Until Obama stepped up to the mike and talked to us like adults.
When this campaign season started, my beloved was firmly in Ron Paul's camp. Not because he agreed with most of Paul's platform, but because Paul has been dead-on about the economy, my beloved's #1 concern (particularly since he works construction). And, whatever else I might think or feel, I don't disagree with the man about empire-building, the MIC and fiat money.
When this campaign started, I was sort of in Kucinich's camp, and sort of in Edward's camp. I didn't think much of Edwards in 2004, so I wasn't going to hop on the bandwagon this time without thinking about it long and hard. I liked Kucinich's healthcare plan best, I liked Edward's passionate anger towards corporations...
So we watched all the debates, Republican and Democrat. We debated between ourselves what the most important issues were and how the media was distorting or ignoring those issues in favor of soundbites and more air time for themselves. We actually tried a drinking game one night to see how many times in the Situation Room, Wolf managed to bring himself and what he'd done into conversations he had with people he was supposed to be interviewing. We had to give up in less than 30 minutes. Mind you, we hate the Situation Room, but we love watching Cafferty subtly and not-so-subtly show his disdain for Blitzer.
And slowly it was winnowed down to three people neither of us were particularly crazy about. McCain is, and was, a joke to us both. A dangerous joke, to be sure, but a joke. Clinton leaves us both cold, and while we worry about the Supreme Court, and we think she's smart, there's something a little too...Machiavellian about her. Obama sounds great, what with the hope and all, but we've been political geeks for 20+ years; he's so careful, and measured, and that whole hope thing just seems like code for "trust me". Yeah, right--we'll just wait and see.
Then came yesterday, and the speech. I watched it at work, riveted, rapt, my whole body shaking, tears in my eyes. He spoke eloquently on a topic no one--at least in my memory--has bothered with because of fear of offending someone, or saying the wrong thing, or having the media distort it. He took a stand for his friend and mentor, AND he took a stand for all of us. And he left no one out, he denigrated no one, he was angry with no one, he encircled friend and foe with calm, with grace and with reason. "My dreams do not have to come at the expense of yours". Never have I heard anything so powerful from a politician, never has a speech moved me the way this did--nor has one ever haunted me the way this has. Still, today, I can't stop thinking about it.
My beloved was late coming in last night from work. It was 9:30 when he came through the door and he was exhausted from a 15 hour day. I told him to sit and watch the speech, right now. I'd been waiting all day to share this with him and I NEEDED him to see it. He did the guy thing, sighed, did "the frown", and got on the computer. "Jesus, it's half and hour long?" "It's worth it," was my only response. I fixed him something to eat while he watched and when it finished, he had tears in his eyes, too. He didn't say anything for a few minutes, and then, in a shaky voice, he said "He gets it, he really gets it...wow." And then, words I didn't believe I would ever hear. "Ron Paul was wrong."
I was a little startled, to say the least, and so I asked him to explain what he meant. He pointed at the computer screen and said, "All this time, I've been thinking if the economy got fixed, the nation would get fixed, but its the other way around."
And that, I suppose, is the real genius of Obama. It's not just that he's smart, not just that he's honest, it's that in 30 minutes, this man showed me how to BEGIN to fix what ails this nation. Never before has anyone placed a foot on the path and said, "it starts here". Oh, I've heard plenty of pundits talk about how to solve problems, politicians too, but there's always another problem underneath it, and underneath that, or a counter-argument to why this solution or that solution will cause more problems than it solves. But this was simple. A request for me to open my eyes and care--to hope. I've been so cynical about politics for so long I couldn't see it for what it really was. Truth. Healing.
Part of me is ashamed that I did not see this sooner, that I didn't recognize truth when I heard it, that I'm so well-trained by the MSM that in spite of being proud of being able to think for myself, that crap seeped into my consciousness. But I did see it yesterday. I heard. I. GOT. IT.
And so did my beloved. We sent a link to the video to everyone we could think of, asking them to please watch it. We scraped together what little we could spare and sent Obama's campaign a contribution, along with a fervent prayer that he is the next president.
Does Kos need another diary about the speech? No, but the plethora of diaries about it in the last 24 hours is, I think, all of us struggling to somehow tell one another what that speech DID to us, for us. And to ask this community, did you feel it too? Is this just me or was that one of the most powerful moments in the history of our nation? Is it just me, or is this man the leader we've always wanted? Is it just me, or did he give voice to a truth that can re-shape this country?
I wasn't sure before, but I am now--this nation needs him, even the ones who don't know it yet.