leaning towards Obama

January 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

Before the caucus results come in, I want to state publicly that I haven’t decided who to back in this election but that I am leaning towards supporting Barack Obama.

I am pleased that this is a difficult decision. While I have disagreements with all of the candidates, it is a welcome surprise to find myself respecting all of the viable candidates on the Democratic side. I have economic and foreign policy differences with most of them, and ALL of them are to my right socially, but the truth is that I could not be elected president. I intend to be more and more vocal about my political opinions and I fully expect to occasionally be frustrated with anyone who is (can be) elected. While I have friends who think I should vote for Kucinich because some planks in his platform are closest to my ideas, I don’t think that Kucinich would do much to bring the United States back into meaningful conversation with the world community. Every time he justifies a policy position with which I agree by asserting that we are all bound by a cosmic “love” I become very uncomfortable. Agreeing with me for the wrong reasons is sometimes worse than disagreeing with me for the right reasons.

I still hear whisperings that Clinton is secretly “like us” and that she will govern from the left despite having run from the Lieberman center. I think Clinton is genuinely a centrist. She was raised as a conservative, she rebelled as an idealistic liberal and, like many of those in her generation, has come to believe that her youthful idealism is at odds with pragmatism, and that genuine progress can only come from the middle path. I have a great deal of respect for her, but I don’t think that dynasties are healthy for functioning republics, and I am very troubled by her tendency to conduct business behind closed doors, however personable and approachable she may be once the doors are pried open.

Obama and Clinton frequently end up in the same place, policy-wise, but Obama is campaigning on process as much as policy. Consensus and triangulation may ultimately yield similar results, but they are very different processes. Consensus building, in which Obama came to believe while working as a community organizer, is about bringing people into the political process and conducting the conversation in the open. A number of the spats between Clinton and Obama have revolved around this very real philosophical difference. Clinton says that a presidential candidate should be careful what (s)he says in public while Obama asserts that the people deserve to know the minds of their representatives, and to be part of the conversation.

The only way the United States remains relevant in a way that interests me is if there is a return to a more politically, culturally, and socially engaged public. Making policy decrees without consulting the public, conducting closed-door policy meetings and announcing the results in language that has been polled but not discussed, is not the way to build a 21st century republic.

Obama’s recent statements that Democrats lost in 2000 and 2004 because they embraced the divisive red-state / blue-state rhetoric of the Republicans are accurate. Yes, the Republicans were worse in 2000 and 2004, but Gore would have won in a landslide had he run a less alienating campaign in 2000 and Kerry would have won marginally had he run a minimally competent campaign in 2004. The lesson learned from Howard Dean is not that the internet can raise lots of money but that Democrats need to stop ceding “red states” to the Republicans and run a 50 state campaign in every election. Republicans can no longer be allowed to take for granted the working-class voters who are, understandably, so worried about money that they can be manipulated with the word “taxes.” It is time to give voters enough respect and credit to allow them to be witness to a more complicated conversation about economics, among other things. Obama is not “running to the right” by calling attention to the flaws of previous Democratic campaigns; he is acknowledging that the 50%/50% balance of the last several elections is unsustainable and unproductive. He wants “change” that results less from his prescriptive proclamations than from open dialogue with an engaged body politic.

Edwards’s populist rhetoric is appealing, and a number of his policy positions and opinions and attitudes are closer to mine than Obama’s are, but as much as I enjoy the combative, out-for-blood tone of his applause lines, I think they sustain the red-state/blue-state 50/50 tension that has dominated U.S.-American politics for the past 10 years (and more than that). I applaud him for acknowledging that poverty exists but I disagree with him on some of his protectionist positions. And, frankly, he does not signify change in the same way that Obama does.

By electing Barack Obama, we would be demonstrating to the world that neither race, nor family name, nor the Mason-Dixon line continue to determine the future of presidential politics in this country. We would also be acknowledging that Hawai`i is a state, and that South East Asia exists, not only as a breeding ground for terrorists, but as a place where people go to school, have jobs, and raise children of their own. We would acknowledge that we live in a world where academics from Kenya and activists from the midwest fall into bed together and have children who defy reductive demographic categorization.

Michelle Obama as first lady is almost reason enough to vote for Barack.

I have some friends who are still angry with Obama for allowing an ex-gay gospel singer to tour in support of him, despite the fact that an openly gay minister was on the same tour and that Obama publicly disavowed McClurkin’s beliefs. It’s time to stop shutting people out of the conversation just because we disagree with them. If McClurkin wanted to support Obama even after Obama publicly disagreed with some of McClurkin's statements, then we should welcome him. To be honest, I think it is quite possible to be happily “ex-gay” as on some level I consider myself happily ex-straight. I’m so outside of this debate that it’s difficult for me to take it seriously. And I think whatever we’re calling the generation after Generation Y will render it irrelevant.

I do disagree with Obama on healthcare. While he has a valid point that it doesn’t make sense to “mandate” buying into a system if you’re not willing to make clear what the “punishment” would be for not doing so, he is willfully ignoring the economic fact that those millions of people who would opt out of health insurance would raise the price for the rest of us. Truthfully, I might myself be one of those who chose not to be covered under the Obama plan; I’ve been making that gamble for the last decade or so, after all. I also think that universal health care (like same-sex marriage) is almost inevitable. Any of the plans put forth by the Democrats, and even those put forth by some of the Republicans, will ultimately result in an end to the for-profit health insurance industry. This is one that the “free-market” folks are going to lose.

I have more to say, but it’s just about time to start watching Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman ramble on about how tonight is an historical night.

Thing is: they might be right.

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