With the California primary ten days away, it's time to decide. And for me, it's not been easy.
My paramount concern is to prevent a Republican victory in November. Even though it seems to be a Democratic year, no one can say which Democratic can defeat, say, John McCain, the full-throated advocate of "winning" the Iraq war. At stake are many issues beyond Iraq, not least the appointment of the next generation of federal judges.
I will vote without hesitation for the Democratic nominee, if only to stop to the neo-conservative usurpation of power which began in Florida in 2000.
One must choose a candidate based on the issues for which they stand, the spirit they invoke, and the people they are able to mobilize.
As for issues, the differences between Obama and Clinton on Iraq are difficult to pin down. Obama was against the Iraq war five years ago, and favors a more rapid pullout of combat troops than Clinton. But both would replace combat troops with an American counterinsurgency force of tens of thousands, potentially turning Iraq into Central America in the 1970s. Obama seems more supportive of diplomacy than Clinton, but he supports military intervention in Pakistan's tribal areas. Edwards favors a more rapid pullout from Iraq, but is unlikely to prevail.
On Iraq, the anti-war movement has helped turn a public majority against the war, a historic achievement. But the movement alone lacks much capacity to forge anything beyond the slogan of "bring the troops home." Our most achievable goal is a strong voter mandate for peace in November, the election of more Congressional Democrats, and spreading public awareness of the dangers of counterinsurgency. The election of a Democratic president is a necessary condition for ending the war, but sadly not a sufficient one.
So the choice remains.
I do not like the Hillary haters in our midst. As president, her court appointees alone would represent a relief from the present rigging of the courts and marginal improvements for working people. On Iraq, I believe she could be pushed to withdraw. She is a centrist, and it will be up to social movements to alter the center.
Nor do I like the role being played by President Bill Clinton, who is telling lies about Iraq and Obama that are unbecoming a former president.
Neither do I agree with Gloria Steinem's divisive claim that the gender barrier is greater than the racial one. Who wants to measure slavery against the Inquisition? In the case at hand, who among us would argue that the barriers against Hillary Clinton are greater than those facing Barack Obama? What is compelling is that most black women support Obama.
I respect John Edwards' campaign and the role he has played in driving the Democratic Party towards a progressive agenda. At this point, however, I cannot foresee a primary he will win.
That leaves Barack Obama. I have been devastated by too many tragedies and betrayals over the past 40 years to ever again deposit so much hope in any single individual, no matter how charismatic or brilliant. But today I see across the generational divide the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity of a new generation bidding to displace the old ways. Obama's moment is their moment, and I pray that they succeed without the sufferings and betrayals my generation went through. There really is no comparison between the Obama generation and those who would come to power with Hillary Clinton, and I suspect she knows it. The people she would take into her administration may have been reformers and idealists in their youth, but they seem to seek now a return to their establishment positions of power. They are the sorts of people young Hillary Clinton herself would have scorned at Wellesley. If history is any guide, the new "best and brightest" of the Obama generation will unleash a new cycle of activism, reform and fresh thinking before they follow pragmatism to its dead end.
Many ordinary Americans will take a transformative step down the long road to the Rainbow Covenant if Obama wins. For at least a brief moment, people around the world -- from the shantytowns to the sweatshops, even to the restless rich of the Sixties generation -- will look up from the treadmills of their shrunken lives to the possibilities of what life still might be. Environmental justice and global economic hope would dawn as possibilities.
Is Barack the one we have been waiting for? Or is it the other way around? Are we the people we have been waiting for? Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agend. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. [As Gandhi once said of India's liberation movement, "There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader."]
We are in a precious moment where caution must yield to courage. It is better to fail at the quest for greatness than to accept our planet's future as only a reliving of the past.
So I endorse the movement that Barack Obama has inspired and will support his candidacy in the inevitable storms ahead.
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I would consider myself fairly far out on the anti-war side of things, but there are a number of crucial difference
1. "Communist
2. The U.S. presence in Central America was never a peacekeepi
You're obviously a smart guy. It's not too late to try to think about things that are going on now without reflexivel
Glad you drank the koolaid, too. Whatever happened to that essay you wrote on the "Neo-colon
BTW, you all should read my post on the Clinton's racist practices employed in SC. It seems now with super-Tues
The post: http://ref
"I will vote without hesitation for the Democratic nominee, if only to stop to the neo-conser
Are you advocation
How do we expect this system to change if we keep feeding it with this reasoning.
Please vote for the one who best represents your views even if it means voting for 3rd, 4th or 5th party!
That is the only way to change and send a message.
Great post, Tom -- thanks!
We missed it once... not again.
Are you in your 50s, or older?
Do you remember where you were...
The day John was shot?
The day Bobby was shot?
The day Martin was shot?
Those days closed a chapter of opportunit
Whatever your age, it is not too late or too soon to be a maker of - not only a witness to - history.
The thing that made so many of us so sad then was that we KNEW that we were watching something great fade away, like a mighty train into the mist, and we had no idea that we would ever see it again.
Well... now we are on the other end of that tortured cycle.
That train is coming again...
Not to give us a ride... that would be too easy.
But to roar into the future on tracks that WE help to lay.
That train is not Obama - he is only a conductor, and not even the only one, though he is now in front.
The train is US.
Young and old... black and white and red and brown and yellow... all of us.
US
North and South... East and West... city and country... all of us.
US
Tired of the foolishnes
US
And not just US.
The United States of US.
Go... Be... US.
Obama.
www.gobe.u
It reminds me of what it must have been like during the rise of Hitler. The German people are good people. They just suspended judgment of their leader in order to believe they could win with him and paid terrible unintended consequenc
I am a democrat and need the media to be fair to the Clintons and criticize Barack Obama as much. Keep count-----
I may be paranoid but I think our democracy is at stake. Our media should not have so much power as to propel the wrong person onto the world stage.
I hope he would be part of the coming Dem Nomination and administra
I also worry imperative
I worry that Obama would not carry the South anywhere near as well as Edwards would. Practicall
It's great to see you talk reflective
Edwards valiantly took up the charge against the quiet enemy of corporate dominance and because of the corporate media has paid the strong and punishing price, often shut down almost to oblivion..
Maybe California will bust that open for him.
For the sake of a more substantiv
Thanks for a great post, Tom. Got my morning off to a good start.
Have you studied the results from South Carolina? It is the working and lower middle classes who seem to be waking up, at long last, to the lie of the Republican
I don't feel I know him well enough to say that he would make the ideal president but what he represents to those of us looking for a change to the corrupt establishm
Some are born great, others have it thrust upon them. Wit Obama, I feel it would be the latter. If this type of powerful, populist movement puts Obama in office, whether it's what he intended or not, I think he would be swept towards the goals and hopes of the majority of reasonable people in this country.
Finding a crack in the armor of the status quo power structure in both parties is a feat in itself, to slip through it and wrest control from them back into the hands of the majority may be a once in a lifetime opportunit
You have said beautifull
Very many respondent
We expect neither.
They often further cast FDR and LBJ as "realists" who - with partisan glee - wrestled their Congressio
What they have completely forgotten - or discounted - is the electoral clout that FDR and LBJ brought to the table, with landslide victories preceding their legislativ
Without those victories, neither would have succeeded as they did (or, probably, gotten into as much trouble, as FDR did with The Court and LBJ did with The War).
Obama is seeking a transforma
Without it, there will be no governing leverage - for Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, or anyone else.
The only remaining lever would be the momentary unifying power of catastroph
Even this fades quickly, as we saw the post-911 collective passion for unity degenerate into virulent partisansh
This is not "kuumbaya"
The only practical question is: "Who can forge the "govering majority"?
The bottom line - and there are no guarantees whatsoever - is that Obama has the best chance.
And if you're thinking Bloomberg.
Obama is the guy.
Then I saw the Gene McCarthy movement and how that movement got us Nixon.
Then the George McGovern movement and more Nixon.
Maybe Obama will get the nomination but by the time we get to November I'm afaid we will see a repeat of the Goldwater movement.
That may get us where we need to be 20 years from now.
As a fellow advocate of peace, I applaud your endorsemen