I am in love with Iowa, now
I don't know if this is bizarre or not, but everytime I hear the word "Iowa" my heart warms.
I'm Canadian....I've never been to Iowa in my life (only to New York, Massachusetts and Florida)...but now the next state I visit whenever I get around to it will be Iowa.
Since Jan/Feb of 2007, when I picked up The Audacity of Hope, I'd been rooting for Obama. Not for any whacky ideas about hope or for economic ideology or whathaveyou....but because his temperament reminded me of Lincoln. I could see Obama, in a foreign policy crisis, bring the best minds from all over the ideological spectrum to throw ideas around. Then he would sit silent and deliberate, playing a mental chess game with the facts and options....playing out every move until he had the exact right course of action. I could picture an Obama Presidency getting the world through anther Cuban Missle Crisis or something.
So that belief in Obama had taken a big hit over the summer of '07 as Hillary Clinton's strategy of being "inevitable" was in full swing, as Obama was somewhere between 20 and 30 points down in the national polls.
But there was one state who was paying attention. One state, filled with white, middle class, rural voters (supposedly the exact opposite of those Obama appealed to) who were paying attention. As opposed to some racist rural voters, these people were kind...they were open to new ideas....and they were willing to make a choice that seemed far fetched.
Those dark days of mid 2007 were transformed to real genuine hope by Iowa.
This image below put me in the best of moods, because it made me realize that it wasn't just a dream anymore...it wasn't a fantasy, but a possibility.
IOWA pic
And now that the general election is upon us, Iowa is still solidly for Obama. These people that started the dream are still loyal and reliable. With all of the nasty attacks against Obama that are supposed to appeal to their demographics they still hold strong, knowing that the choice they made was a wise one.