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A few weeks ago, I wrote that politics will break your heart, and today, I'm hoping not to have my heart broken, as I'm going to the polls in a few minutes to vote for Barack Obama.
There are a lot of reasons I'm voting for him, including liberal policy that also keeps us from being a nanny state (note: on fiscal issues, I am less liberal than most of my friends), an actual understanding of Internet issues (thanks for Patty for finding this stuff for me), and a sense I have that he's actually willing to listen on issues like gay rights; Clinton, on the other hand, seems, like her husband, to just go for polls and expediency -- I remember when we all got sold out on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Some of you will reply that these are vague impressions and not policy. You will tell me I am foolish; you will think I am stupid. Trust me, I know, I've heard it before. To all this my response is simple. Policy is not what this post is about, because that's what other people write about eloquently; I'm making the case that I think I'm uniquely good at making. Impressions matter here -- that's the case I'm making.
Obama is bringing people into the process.
A political process with more participants is a political process less ruled by extremists in both parties.
A political process with more participants is a political process less easily hijacked by our various sloppy, cobbled together or just not reliable or safe voting systems.
And a political process where people like the candidates is a political process that encourages more people to be candidates themselves. And this to me is key. I don't feel like Clinton is inspiring kids and young adults out there to want to be elected officials, and I feel like Obama is. I feel like an Obama victory brings us future candidates we can be excited about, not just on the big policy issues (e.g., Iraq), but on the small ones.
To me voting for Hillary Clinton would be a vote for where we should be today, but voting for Obama is a vote for where we will be tomorrow. I am not here to play it safe.
I live in New York City, famously described as an island off the coast of America. Despite the best efforts of my life, so has my heart too been such an island. My city has been used -- vilified first and then celebrated in destruction to unify a country I have never felt I was a part of -- because I am female, because I am queer, because I have had an abortion, because I am not Christian, because I am not as white as you think I am -- over and over again.
When I watch Obama speak, I don't feel that way.
When I watch Obama speak, I feel like 9/11 is finally over.
When I watch Obama speak, it no longer feels as if the smartest thing any of us can talk about is the fall of Rome. As if we should just be ready, and waiting and already dead.
When Obama says "in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope," I feel as if I have lived here all along, because my own story too has been so unlikely -- from how I choose to live to how my family got here and what we've managed to do and see. It turns out I was made for and from this country, more than I knew as a teenager who longed for football games and beauty pageants so I could be like an imaginary everybody else.
If the beauty of Obama's words can do nothing more in the next four years than bring people in the process so that we never, ever have another eight years like those we've just come through, that is enough for me. And it is more than I would have dared hoped for even a few months ago.
Hillary Clinton would surely make a fine and intelligent president. But she ticks people off, and is not our best choice to defeat John McCain or hold the White House for 8 years or for the party thereafter. She is wonkish and runs the risk of being a Jimmy Carter, who just didn't have that thing to make us want to endure difficult times, and those were difficult times. Right or wrong this is the nature of the world, and of people.
One of my very first memories is of the bicentennial parade in NYC in 1976, coming down Fifth Avenue at night, with girls in light up Minnie Mouse costumes and fireworks over the park that scared me -- I was three-and-a-half and in my mother's arms and she would rock back with each blast.
I am voting for Obama, in part, because I've spent most of my life since then -- more than three decades -- being told the myth of America was not really actually for me by everyone from my family to my television.
Well fuck that.
There are a lot of reasons I'm voting for him, including liberal policy that also keeps us from being a nanny state (note: on fiscal issues, I am less liberal than most of my friends), an actual understanding of Internet issues (thanks for Patty for finding this stuff for me), and a sense I have that he's actually willing to listen on issues like gay rights; Clinton, on the other hand, seems, like her husband, to just go for polls and expediency -- I remember when we all got sold out on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Some of you will reply that these are vague impressions and not policy. You will tell me I am foolish; you will think I am stupid. Trust me, I know, I've heard it before. To all this my response is simple. Policy is not what this post is about, because that's what other people write about eloquently; I'm making the case that I think I'm uniquely good at making. Impressions matter here -- that's the case I'm making.
Obama is bringing people into the process.
A political process with more participants is a political process less ruled by extremists in both parties.
A political process with more participants is a political process less easily hijacked by our various sloppy, cobbled together or just not reliable or safe voting systems.
And a political process where people like the candidates is a political process that encourages more people to be candidates themselves. And this to me is key. I don't feel like Clinton is inspiring kids and young adults out there to want to be elected officials, and I feel like Obama is. I feel like an Obama victory brings us future candidates we can be excited about, not just on the big policy issues (e.g., Iraq), but on the small ones.
To me voting for Hillary Clinton would be a vote for where we should be today, but voting for Obama is a vote for where we will be tomorrow. I am not here to play it safe.
I live in New York City, famously described as an island off the coast of America. Despite the best efforts of my life, so has my heart too been such an island. My city has been used -- vilified first and then celebrated in destruction to unify a country I have never felt I was a part of -- because I am female, because I am queer, because I have had an abortion, because I am not Christian, because I am not as white as you think I am -- over and over again.
When I watch Obama speak, I don't feel that way.
When I watch Obama speak, I feel like 9/11 is finally over.
When I watch Obama speak, it no longer feels as if the smartest thing any of us can talk about is the fall of Rome. As if we should just be ready, and waiting and already dead.
When Obama says "in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope," I feel as if I have lived here all along, because my own story too has been so unlikely -- from how I choose to live to how my family got here and what we've managed to do and see. It turns out I was made for and from this country, more than I knew as a teenager who longed for football games and beauty pageants so I could be like an imaginary everybody else.
If the beauty of Obama's words can do nothing more in the next four years than bring people in the process so that we never, ever have another eight years like those we've just come through, that is enough for me. And it is more than I would have dared hoped for even a few months ago.
Hillary Clinton would surely make a fine and intelligent president. But she ticks people off, and is not our best choice to defeat John McCain or hold the White House for 8 years or for the party thereafter. She is wonkish and runs the risk of being a Jimmy Carter, who just didn't have that thing to make us want to endure difficult times, and those were difficult times. Right or wrong this is the nature of the world, and of people.
One of my very first memories is of the bicentennial parade in NYC in 1976, coming down Fifth Avenue at night, with girls in light up Minnie Mouse costumes and fireworks over the park that scared me -- I was three-and-a-half and in my mother's arms and she would rock back with each blast.
I am voting for Obama, in part, because I've spent most of my life since then -- more than three decades -- being told the myth of America was not really actually for me by everyone from my family to my television.
Well fuck that.
