Yesterday, I posted a diary titled 25 Reasons I Cannot Support Senator Clinton, which received many warm responses for which I am grateful. My intent was to enumerate the many concerns I have developed about her candidacy for the Democratic nomination. However, it was not to suggest that I would not vote for her in the general election were she to win the nomination. I would.
Someone suggested, and it had already occured to me, that I post a follow-up diary of reasons why I support the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama. So, here it is.
This is by no means a complete list of reasons why Barack Obama deserves our support. I would even encourage readers to comment with their own reasons, starting from #26...let's see how high we can take the list! I hope that supporters of Senator Clinton will take the time to read through, as well, for you will find, as I said yesterday, that I am no "Hillary hater", but rather someone who has spent many hours thinking through the difference between our two excellent candidates. We are so fortunate this year to have such a choice.
- On the day Barack Obama is inaugurated, America will think differently of itself, and this is no small thing. Imagine the symbolism of it. Do not short shrift symbols, for they are very powerful. To be able to point to a President Barack Obama and tell a child of any color anywhere in America that they, too, through education and hard work, could someday be anything they want to be...that’s a powerful thing, especially in our melting-pot nation.
- Obama’s narrative is quintessentially American. A biracial kid with an absentee father whose improbable path carried him from Hawaii to Indonesia to Chicago to Washington; a Harvard law grad who turned down a coveted Supreme Court clerkship to work as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side; a United States Senator who still shops for groceries with his young children, and who only recently got out from underneath his student loans; a family man with a solid marriage to a bright and dynamic, articulate and self-made woman; a man of faith who walks the walk of his religion.
- Senator Obama inspires people of all ages to action. And while inspiration alone isn’t enough to get the job done, it’s a necessary ingredient to begin the hard work. After sixteen years of Clinton and Bush hyper-partisanship, Obama’s appeal to Americans to have the audacity to hope falls on fertile ground. His unwillingness to cross the line into the dark side of politics has touched a fundamental place in the hearts of many who are eager to believe that the political process is not entirely a cynical joke.
- Senator Obama understands that you win elections not by pandering to your base, but by drawing support from independents and from the opposite side, by articulating what unifies people rather than exploiting what divides them. Change comes not just from knowing how to work the levers of power – it takes more than that. It takes creating the popular movements necessary to support and sustain change. No other candidate spurs that kind of enthusiasm.
- Obama’s appeal also rests on an attractive optimism, a chance for America to move beyond the poisonous legacy of the divisions wrought between liberals and conservatives by the 1960s, Vietnam, and the 1990s. He meets a hunger that exists nationwide to turn the page on the tired ideological battles of the past.
- Obama has built a campaign unlike seen before, based on cross-cultural and multi-generational grassroots movements and community building. He possesses an exceptional and enduring talent for connecting with voters, and has attracted voters on a level unseen in decades: over one million Americans have contributed to his campaign! His appeal is also much broader ideologically and racially than perhaps any politician in American history, and his demographic diversity contrasts sharply and is more representative of America than Senator McCain’s demographic monotony: mostly white, and mostly male.
- Obama energizes youth for service and involvement to a degree also unseen in decades. This is a crucial point for Democrats to understand: it is well known that if a Party attracts new voters for their first election, those voters tend to stick with that Party for most of their lives.
- On the day Barack Obama is inaugurated, the world will think differently of America. The election of Obama, a man with a multicultural name and heritage, would overnight begin to improve the image of the United States abroad, and send the global message that a post-Bush and post-Clinton 21st-century American era has arrived. With his election, the value of America’s moral currency abroad would begin to be restored.
- Obama’s stalwart opposition to the Iraq War since before its beginning, and his stalwart dedication to see the Iraq War to its end. Obama said, in 2002: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars." In 2008, Obama speaks once again for millions: "I don’t want to just end the war, I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."
- Obama is a Harvard-educated constitutional law scholar, and civil libertarian. In his campaign speeches, he has frequently referred to his desire to close Guantanamo, stop torture, restore habeas corpus rights to detainees, bring back our lost civil liberties, and return to a presidency that sticks to its vow to follow the U.S. Constitution.
- With Senator John McCain as the Republican nominee for the general election campaign, a man with broad popular appeal but also a man who, if elected, would be the oldest president at inauguration in American history, what better choice between past and future could Americans be offered than between he and Obama? A choice between McCain and Clinton is little more than a choice between different and clashing versions of the past.
- In addition to being the candidate most likely to lure people to the polls who don’t typically vote, particularly the young, Obama will lure black voters who, if presented with the prospect of electing the first black president, will turn out in record numbers. And yet Obama is a black man who does not run as a black candidate. He never dwells on racial issues. When he mentions emancipation and civil rights, it is right alongside women’s rights and workers’ rights. He does not need to speak about black-white reconciliation – he embodies it.
- Here seems another advantage Obama has when it comes to electability: he gets good press coverage. He is a media darling, and this is no small perk. And while we can expect the media to get tougher, as they should, on Obama once he becomes the nominee, we can also expect coverage to still revolve around America’s willingness to take a giant leap forward and elect a black president. The mainstream press corps will be rooting for the underdog, wanting to see history, and headlines, made.
- We cannot forget the superficial and yet undeniable flattering effect the camera lens can have for a tall, handsome man in his forties with an attractive wife and two beautiful young daughters, especially when contrasted with its unflattering effect for a short, heavily-wrinkled man in his seventies. As much as I’m ashamed as an American to admit it, in America image is important, after all.
- Obama’s legislative record speaks well to the types of issues on which he will focus his attention as president. Addressed among the 570 bills he introduced in the 109th and 110th Congress were issues such as: energy efficiency and climate change, health care, public health, consumer protection and labor rights, the needs of veterans and of active duty personnel and their families, the restoration of civil rights, congressional ethics and accountability, lobbying reform, the destruction or securing of "loose" nuclear weapons in other countries, pandemic flu preparedness, voting rights, education, child support enforcement, discrimination, and relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
- Obama pushes progressive values into the mainstream. He constantly talks about his core liberal philosophy in a way that’s appealing to non-liberals. He has an ability to use his eloquence not just to persuade, but to mobilize, and to unite. Unlike the Clinton method of triangulating, moving Democrats to the middle, Obama moves the middle to our values. He stands for progressive values while appealing to common sense and pragmatism over ideology and demagoguery. And the end effect might be an ascendant, mainstream progressive party that enacts its values into laws.
- The Economist magazine said it best recently: "The best presidents are like magnets below a piece of paper, invisibly aligning iron filings into a new pattern of their making." Most of the presidents in American history who have been transformative have been charismatic figures with exceptional oratorical skills who persuaded Americans to share in their larger vision. I am not able to imagine a President Hillary Clinton or a President John McCain being similarly transformative, or being such a magnet.
- Obama has a 100% positive rating from the major pro-choice groups. Enough said.
- Obama has more ability to expand the electoral map than does Senator Clinton. According to the SurveyUSA national poll released March 6th, Obama has 229 electoral votes (19 states) solid or leaning towards him when matched versus Senator McCain, while McCain has 123 (16 states). When matched with Senator McCain, Senator Clinton has 203 electoral votes (13 states) solid or leaning, while Senator McCain has 201 (24 states).
- Obama bests McCain nationally by an average of 4.2 percent across all polls, while McCain bests Clinton by an average of 0.2 percent across all polls. Of course, it is only March, eight months until the November election, and things could change. But aren’t we supposed to be choosing the candidate who gives us the best chance at regaining the White House?
- Obama will have a far easier time winning over Clinton voters than she will having winning over his voters. Of course, whichever candidate gains the nomination should do whatever possible to prove to the others’ voters that the candidate deserves their vote...we’re all supposed to be in this together to defeat Senator McCain, right? But Obama’s constituency is less transferable than Senator Clinton’s. Independent voters will be more reluctant to back Clinton, and will be more enamored of Senator McCain. Younger voters have less enthusiasm for Senator Clinton and will stay home in greater numbers for her. And African-American voters may stay home more, as well, feeling cheated if Obama is not the nominee.
- Obama has great crossover appeal. He reaches out warmly to independents, moderate Republicans, and evangelicals. He has done better than Clinton in red states, purple states, and any-colored states with open primaries where non-Democrats are allowed to participate. This could mean he has more ability to win support from independents in the general election, independents who overwhelmingly disapprove of the Iraq War and who, when given the choice between Obama and McCain, are not likely to give their support to a man who says that America could be in Iraq for another hundred years.
- Most voters do not vote primarily on the basis of policies, but rather on values, connection, authenticity, trust, and identity. Obama has solid progressive values. He connects with voters as no politician has done since Reagan, or Kennedy. His authenticity is unquestioned. Recent polls reveal greater than 20-point differences between Obama and McCain on matters of trust and identity.
- After the bitterness of the Bush years, America badly needs a dose of unity. We face huge issues in the years to come, and to work through them we need not only optimism, creativity, and courage, but also trust in one another, and an end to bitter partisanship. None of that arises out of cynicism and despair. Does anyone foresee an end to – or even an easing of – our bitter divisions with a President Clinton or President McCain?
- There is no question Obama is an icon of hope. And despite ridicule to the contrary, hope does matter. When people join movements to realize raised hopes, our nation has a chance of changing for the better. When they damp their hopes, as Clinton suggests, the status quo is preserved. Hope and fear, future and past are the determining factors in this election. Not gender, not race. Will grouchy and divided Americans be driven primarily by their fears, or by their hopes? By their nostalgia for some "better" past, or by the courage to face a new future? The possibility of a new president named Barack Hussein Obama hangs on the answer.
This era demands a president who will include all of us in the debate over our future, whether or not we agree on every issue. And while I do not agree with Senator Obama on every issue, it does not matter so much to me, because this election campaign is about so much more than individuals and their pet issues. It is about the reacquisition of an ideal that has been stolen away from us.
For now, at this time in history, I believe Barack Obama to be the best antidote we’ve got to the darkness and division we’ve endured for too many years. He’s our best hope to re-dignify the office of President of the United States with a stature that symbolizes the awesomeness of America. He’s our best hope not to make change, but to remind us of our ability to make change.
His is a message of faith, belief, and empowerment. It speaks well of him, and of us, that that message is resonating so strongly across America. Will we take a chance on a President Obama? If elected, will he confront the enormous peril of high expectations? Yes to both. But I say NOW IS THE TIME to go for broke, to challenge and to overthrow the governing ideas and style of the last sixteen years.
Yes, we can.