10 Good Bets that I Wouldn't Have Taken a Year Ago

A year ago today, along with other Texas Democrats, I participated in our unique primacaucus process. After voting in the primary that morning, I gathered with many of my neighbors in our church-based voting location to caucus for one of the two leading candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

At that point, Democrats in that church basement, my neighborhood, our state, and the country seemed divided between Obama and Clinton. A bet placed on either candidate would have been risky.

Yet now, only a year later, it feels like much more time has passed. In fact, it seems like we are living in an alternate political reality divorced from what was previously known, understood, practical, and possible simply a year ago.

Thinking back to that night, with its now-defunct political reality, I might have taken a bet on Obama as president, based more on hope than certitude. Yet, I would not have imagined accepting any one of the following bets, although we know now that each would have paid off big.

1. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State

2. John McCain twittering Obama's new budget

3. A Republican using Hurricane Katrina anecdotes to illustrate his point

4. Greater public support for the unemployed and uninsured, than for top executives

5. Chicago politics looking more, not less, corrupt following Obama's win

6. John Edwards' self-induced implosion

7. Moody's analysis identifying Food Stamps as the most effective form of economic stimulus

8. The role that a simple "fist-bump" would play in the presidential campaign

9. Still no dog for the Obama girls

10. And finally, in this time of dire economic crisis, that entitlement, tax, health care, education, and green energy reform all remain on the political agenda. (Not to mention the fact that the prospect of actual policy change seems more likely than ever before.)

My how times have changed!

What other good bets would you have turned down a year ago?

Comments

[westbrooks01]

Rove testifying.

[Susan Bruther]

That Rush Limbaugh would make the republicans look like wimps.

[logicalrabbit]

That Rush Limbaugh would lead the Republican party to its demise....

[IsaacKuo]

That mainstream economists would dare utter the word "nationalization" as a necessary solution.

[allonfla]

I would not have bet on Obama being our President. I only caught on to him last February when he won the Iowa in the primaries. As a Black person watching, I thought he was doing this symbollically - never thought I would see a Black President in my lifetime. When he won Iowa, my jaw dropped to the floor but I still believed Hillary would get the nom because I believed others who were saying she was inevitable.

[JTJMOMEDTEK]

I know what you mean. Even though I am white I thought the same at first, but then I heard what he had to say and was so impressed, mostly by things listed in #10, so I volunteered to make calls for him in a predominantly republican and what I previously thought was racist county. I started doing my own tally of how many people I called enthusiastically said "Yes, I'm votong for Obama" and I thought, WOW, he's really gonna do it!!