It’s time to make a choice.
A year ago, I had a sense of ease about our field of candidates for President. It is a great field and any of them will be better than any Republican and/or third party candidate who might be on the ballot next November.
And after a crazed primary season, I am still certain that we have nothing to fear about any of them.
I will support the nominee of my Party (I always have).
Now, while I do not fear any of the candidates, I do think that FEAR has become the central issue in American politics. FEAR built the modern Republican Party and FEAR is the core obstacle to a progressive majority and real change.
The race is close and it is time to get off the fence.
I have.
I have chosen the only candidate who seems to understand that FEAR is the obstacle to progress.
I have chosen the only candidate to consistently confront the culture of FEAR with a platform of HOPE.
I have chosen to support Barack Obama.
I’ll try and tell you why on the jump...
I’m a Democrat.
I always have been and I suspect that I always will be.
One of my earliest childhood memories is my father talking back to a flickering black and white image of Nixon sweating out a lie during the Kennedy-Nixon Debates.
A few years later, I sat in my second grade classroom as a tearful Teacher told us that JFK had been shot and killed.
A few more years passed and Bobby Kennedy was in the race for the White House. I was twelve and inspired. I watched every speech, every debate and read the write ups in the Detroit papers. I watched Bobby after Martin Luther King was killed and a few weeks later I was watching live TV as Bobby Kennedy won a primary and then was killed.
That was the last race for the White House where a candidate really seized my imagination and insired me to HOPE for the future. It was the last time I really dared to dream of what could be, where I really allowed my self to look at the way things could be and ask "Why not!"
That was over forty years ago and in that time I have worked to support every Democratic Nominee for President. None of our nominees over the years have inspired me when they ran for President. More often than not, the DC consultant/insider class gamed the system to ensure that the weakest Democrat in the field got the nomination. And, not surprisingly their candidate of choice almost always lost.
Still, I am a Party man and so I have knocked on doors year after year for this or that candidate who won the nomination because it was their "turn". Dreadful work supporting the darlings of the beltway potentates and yet I have done it every four years.
This year (just like always) the beltway potentates have their candidate. It is Senator Hillary Clinton. She is this year’s Mondale/Dukakis/Kerry candidate. She is inevitable because it is her turn. Some are excited because she will take us back to the 1990s—a time that could only be called good because it is gone. The Bill Clinton years were OK, but most of the time was spent pushing back on an insane GOP Congress or defending a President under a relentless and time/energy consuming series of attacks. These were years of survival and not progress. I do not want to see a restoration. I want change.
Still if the beltway potentates prevail in their rigged system of front-loaded Primaries, I am certain that come the fall of 2008 I will (once again) be knocking on doors in an attempt to elect a weak Democrat to the Presidency. The prospect fills me with sadness, but we still have a chance to say no. We have a competitive Primary and we could defeat the candidate of the status quo. IMHO, that would be a great turn of events.
In my lifetime, I have seen a Republican take-over of language and the terms that frame every debate. Time after time they have defined the conversation and the issues. They have controlled the talking points. At the root of their power is a relentless appeal to FEAR. Republicans are great at using FEAR as a tool and a weapon.
They have crafted FEAR into a club to that they used to beat Democrats into submission.
And over the last forty years I have watched my Party go from fearless to fearful.
As I looked at the candidates in this race, their approach to FEAR and the politics/rhetoric of FEAR has been very important to me as I decided who to support.
I want a Democratic Nominee who knows what we face and what the stakes are. I want a nominee who can look the merchants of FEAR in the face and laugh and then take them down. I really want a candidate who knows that:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself..."
That was said back in 1933 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt became our 32nd President and the world was neck-deep in chaos.
Sure, we have problems today and some of them are bad. In fact, some are really bad.
Still—ALL OF THEM—pale in comparison with the 1930s. The only challenge we face that might really compare is Climate Change. And, like the problems we faced as a Nation almost 75 years ago, Climate Crisis also has solutions (PDF).
Seventy-five years ago, FDR knew that FEAR is the enemy of change and progress. He made this clear when he gave his 1st Inaugural speech on March 4th, 1933 (you can read it here, but I would also recommend listening to it here.)
Here is the nut graph of the speech (emphasis added):
I AM CERTAIN that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
A lot of words have been spoken in this campaign. Many memes have been established and many narratives have been beaten into the ground. As I have listen to, watch and studied the Candidates who seek to lead my Party and my Country I have used their response to FEAR as a key measurement of their worth.
The words of FDR have been a guide star for me.
Barack Obama has been the one candidate who has consistently challenged the current addiction to FEAR that is poisoning our Nation and our politics. And more than that, his campaign has not sunk to using base appeals to FEAR as a way to attack other Democrats in the race. He has gotten a lot of points from me for his refusal to buy into the FEAR game.
I wish I could say that every Democrat in the race this year embraced the words of FDR:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself..."
I wish it was true, but it is not.
Over the last two months there has been an endless series of FEAR-based attacks on Obama that have come straight out of the modern Republican Party playbook. It seems that almost every day there is a new FEAR-based appeal/attack aimed at the Senator from Illinois: Obama will leave children uninsured, Obama hates Unions, Obama hate social security, Obama was an ambitious child, Obama did drugs (and might sell them to your children), Obama is black, Obama is naïve, Obama is Muslim, Obama isn’t ready and so on.
These attacks are laughable (the recent Diary, Obama will eat your children shows just how crazy these efforts are). Any reasonable person could find out how silly most of them are with a few minutes of research. And yet, FEAR works. The power of FEAR is the foundation of the modern Republican Party. They own FEAR-based politics and they will always beat any Democrat who wants to challenge them to a FEAR-OFF.
I am frustrated to see Democrats and progressive special interest groups carelessly embrace FEAR as the tactic, meme and blunt campaign instrument to support their guy or gal. It is a self-destructive strategy. I take note of these appeals to FEAR and the folks behind them. We will never change anything by embracing FEAR and the folks who think they can are living in candyland.
FEAR is the real enemy of change. It stifles every progressive impulse and movement. FEAR is the issue in 2008 and only Obama seems to know that FEAR must be replaced with HOPE if any progressive agenda has a chance to succeed.
Since 9-11 America has been engulfed by a culture of FEAR. It led folks to vote for a War that they now regret supporting. It leads folks to support torture and domestic spying. It leads folks to give up their liberties and their rights. It leads to a knee-jerk bashing of the latest waves of new Americans migrating to join us within our historically elastic borders. It leads to a weakening of America’s position in the world and major foreign policy failures.
Once we were a brave Nation. Once we were not afraid to lead.
Now we are afraid of anything and everything. We fear nannies, day laborers, farm workers and men with beards who hide in caves with equal levels of terror.
Hell, we are now afraid of everything. And it is not just Republicans. Democrats have embraced the Culture of FEAR as well.
And that FEAR blocks any and all progressive reforms.
I have listened to the Candidates and their approach to the Culture of FEAR enslaving America. Of all them, it is only Obama who is consistently challenging the Politics of FEAR and offering an alterative to the same old same old.
As I listened to his speech at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner, I was reminded of FDR’s 1st Inaugural Speech. Obama riffed on FDR’s themes like a master jazz musician breathing new life into a well known melody. It was inspiring, beautiful and magnificent (you can watch the speech here). It was also refreshing to have a person running for President who understands the themes and history of America and can weave them seamlessly into the everyday rhetoric of his campaign. After almost eight years of idiocy, Obama’s insightful, passionate intelligence is refreshing.
His speech today in Iowa (you can read it here) is yet another example of him confronting the Politics of FEAR head on.
And it is not just pretty words. It is a message that is on point. It is a message of real and fundamental change and I embrace it.
Obama knows that FEAR is the enemy and he is willing to challenge the Politics of FEAR. He is willing to change the frame and he challenges us to leave our FEARS and join him.
I’m on board.
I have been waiting for a long time to be inspired. I have been waiting since Bobby was killed. Obama has inspired me and filled me with a sense of HOPE. I am excited at the prospect of the real change that an Obama Presidency would create.
He has my enthusiastic support.
And he has the experience to make change possible
Obama has been fighting for change for many years. He has many victories under his belt and he has decades of experience in creating lasting change. In his career he has had many opportunities to cash out, to take an easier path. He could easily be an academic writing about politics for a daily newspaper, or a high price lawyer. Instead, he has stayed in the fight. I will not go into details about his record because there are so many other great Diaries that have already done so.
There are two areas worth mentioning.
One is his successful efforts to fight the Culture of Corruption in Washington DC.
Obama led the effort to pass meaningful lobbying reform the year. It is the most significant lobbying reform legislation in decades (and it has already led Trent Lott and Denny Hastert to seek an early exit from Congress).
I have been writing about the Culture of Corruption in Washington DC for a long time. I have looked at where all the candidates stand on this issue. Obama has been fully engaged with fighting corruption since day one of his Senate campaign in 2004. His solutions are workable and progressive. His leadership on this issue was another major factor in my choice to support him.
And another key factor for me was Obama’s support for Democrats down the ticket and the 50 State Strategy. He has used his run for the White House to build an infrastructure in places that beltway Democrats have written off long ago. Just one example, during his 2004 run for the Senate he donated $25,000 to support Democrats in Alaska. For years he has been giving time, money and energy to rebuild the grassroots of a Democratic Party decimated in the 1990s.
Obama will be a Candidate who will help Democrats down the ticket. He has already proven this time and time again. I am convinced that some other candidates will demand all the focus, energy and support of the Party—leaving Democrats across 50 States on their own and in trouble (this is what happened in the 1990s and why I am not big on a return to those "good old days").
Obama has convinced me to vote my hopes and not my fears. I like that.
He has broken through my reluctance and inspired me to HOPE again. I am grateful for a primary season that inspirers me to once again look at the way things could be and ask "Why not?"
Out of a field of great candidates I have decided Obama is the best of the lot and it is a happy, joyful choice.
If he wins I will be very inspired. If he does not, I will look for the silver lining and work for unity.
The words of FDR have informed my search for a candidate this Primary season. And as we near the moment of a collective choice, I am reminded of the words of another President during his First Inaugural speech in 1861. Way back then, America and the new President, Abraham Lincoln, had far more real things to FEAR than we do in our political culture today and yet he closed the speech with an appeal to the better angels of our nature. It is great advice for Daily Kos, progressives, Democrats and our Nation as we try to get pass the endless years of Republican appeals to the basest demons of our fears:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The Primaries will end. A choice will be made and then we must UNITE!
We have a Country to take back and FEAR is in our way.
Let it go.
It is time to embrace our hopes, our collective courage and talents—to embrace the better angels of our nature.
Make the case for your candidate with hope and passion. Leave the FEAR out. Your argument will be better without it.
And when the Primary process is over: UNITE!
Come together. Fight the FEAR. Fight the power.
We have a Country to take back and a planet to save.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
Cheers