Coming Out

OK, I finally have to confess…. I have been feeling this way for a long time, but it’s really hard to be open about it with family and friends and colleagues. It’s gotten to the point though where I have to come clean.

I am for Obama!

I don’t know why it’s such a hard thing to admit in Progressive circles, but last week when I told my progressive friends at a meeting, I really had to screw up my courage and force myself to speak. I thought about my gay niece coming out to her homophobic relatives and could relate!

Yes, I am for Obama. Wholeheartedly. And I really don’t understand why more progressives don’t support him. OK, he might not be perfect, but then again, neither am I, nor is anybody else I know.

One argument I have heard is: “I am just so tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.” Me too! But Obama is not the lesser of two evils. I actually think he’s the best thing that has come along since Bobby Kennedy. Better perhaps than we deserve as a country. The way I feel is that we are lucky to have a serious contender who has so much going.

I read his book the Audacity of Hope, earlier this year and the depth of his thinking knocked me out. I am hungry for that kind of intelligence and depth in a politician. But so many people who I respect were suspicious of him. So I have been watching him very carefully. And I am still impressed.

Last night, I went to see him and I was struck by his…vulnerability. There he was, this thin wisp of a man, standing in front of the huge crowd and…talking, not performing. I can’t describe the feeling. There was this real person, flesh and blood, not larger than life, not covered in make-up, pale… and he might be president. Amazing.

And he wasn’t whipping the crowd into a frenzy, he was talking to us. At times the crowd was screaming so loudly, you couldn’t hear his words, but then he slowed down and talked softer, until you could hear a pin drop in that great echoing auditorium.

And so when he said unequivocally that he would bring the troops home within 16 months, I believed him. As soon as I’d like? No. But you know what. He’s gonna do it.

I know Krugman has given him a hard time about Health Insurance, and I agree with Krugman’s points. But I also get the strong feeling that Obama is the kind of person who can listen and learn and grow. And that is perhaps the most important thing in a politician I can think of.

I also know there is a deep sense of distrust and disillusionment after the last elections, and I share that. But I don’t think we can have the luxury of cynicism. Barack has been quoting MLK about the “fierce urgency of now” and that’s how I feel. We don’t have much time before the damage is irreparable. And I have children and beautiful granddaughter that has a whole life to live and she needs a country to live it in, and a planet….

Standing on the stage behind Obama was a woman with a sign that said simply “hope” More than half the crowd was young people, and their faces said the same thing. And there really is an audacity to even being able to have hope at this point in time.

But what we don’t have is time. Iowa and New Hampshire are only a month away, and after that we might not even have a choice. So I am going to be in New Hampshire every weekend till then. And I have signed up to make phone calls from home during the week. If anyone wants to join me, let me know, and I’ll hook you up.