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.
I would consider myself fairly far out on the anti-war side of things, but there are a number of crucial differences between Iraq now and Central America in the 1970's, among them being:
1. "Communists" in Central America never attacked and killed 3000 Americans. Yes, Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and Barack stated so at the time, but the unfortunate fact is that they're there now.
2. The U.S. presence in Central America was never a peacekeeping operation, and there's good evidence to suggest that it is so in Iraq in 2008.
You're obviously a smart guy. It's not too late to try to think about things that are going on now without reflexively trying to draw analogies to the 1960's and 70's. Sure, there are always historical parallels, but things have changed quite a bit as well and it would behoove us to focus on looking forward, rather than into the rear-view mirror.
Glad you drank the koolaid, too. Whatever happened to that essay you wrote on the "Neo-colonization of the Ghetto," I would like to get another copy. Over the years mine was lost.
BTW, you all should read my post on the Clinton's racist practices employed in SC. It seems now with super-Tuesday in the offing HRC is changing strategy, the pit bull will be pulled back-on; she'll focus on the economy--"Putting People First," where did I hear that before?
The post: http://reform.squarespace.com/presidency-08/2008/1/27/hes-black-you-know.html
"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."
Are you advocationg the best of 2 evils...the anything but...mentality? I hate to read that.
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 opportunity that has not opened again... until now.
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 foolishness... ready to ROCK!
US
And not just US.
The United States of US.
Go... Be... US.
Obama.
www.gobe.us
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 consequences. Like we will if we suspend our ability to criticize Barack.
I am a democrat and need the media to be fair to the Clintons and criticize Barack Obama as much. Keep count----------PLEASE.
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 administration.
I also worry imperatively above all about winning in November.
I worry that Obama would not carry the South anywhere near as well as Edwards would. Practically every redneck in America will be unjustly against Hillary, and the GOP war machine will play that to its hilt of soundbite ignorance and fervor.
It's great to see you talk reflectively across so much time, Tom. Times that most of us can relate to, especially the betrayals and disappointments we've endured. To see the pendulum swing finally in the direction of environmental justice and care for peoples rather then corporations is something so many of us hope for with baited breath. So many have understandably flat given up; Accepted the chokehold the Bush years have placed on us, thinking we'll never be able to have decent gas prices or fair and mindful justice again; sort of like the frog in the boiling water syndrome.
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.... It's obvious to those of us who recognize this monster; Unfortunately, not enough Americans realize this to reward him for his courage justly.
Maybe California will bust that open for him.
For the sake of a more substantive dialogue alone, I hope so.
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 Republicans and the hope for economic justice that some of the Dems promise.
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 establishment in Washington is bringing many of us together from all directions.
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 opportunity.
You have said beautifully what I deeply feel, which is that a vote for Obama is a vote for this movement - this "governing majority" - forming around him - and around the times we face.
Very many respondents to this post (and many others) have the mistaken belief that Obama's strategy of forging a "governing majority" is naive, as if he believes that either the partisan hacks in congress will either knuckle in to his soaring rhetoric or sing "kuumbaya" in the aisles of Congress.
We expect neither.
They often further cast FDR and LBJ as "realists" who - with partisan glee - wrestled their Congressional opponents to the ground with their competitive attitudes alone.
What they have completely forgotten - or discounted - is the electoral clout that FDR and LBJ brought to the table, with landslide victories preceding their legislative triumphs.
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 transformation of politics primarily by forging and ruthlessly using the same tools that these Presidents used: the power of the population.
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 catastrophe - natural or man-made (or both, as in global warming).
Even this fades quickly, as we saw the post-911 collective passion for unity degenerate into virulent partisanship in less that two years.
This is not "kuumbaya"... this is "realpolitik" of the most ruthless (that word again) and necessary sort.
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... think again. He does not have the political and rhetorical (yes, rhetorical) skills to carry his brand of cross-party governance beyond the seven boroughs of New York.
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 endorsement of Barak Obama. Just today, I told my youngest son (age 27) that I was going to support Obama for president. I have followed your career since the days of the SDS and have mostly admired the way that you have steadfastly kept to your ideals throughout your personal and political life. I too hope, with all my heart, that our (the peoples) dreams do not get crushed by a political zealot or a congressional establishment that wants to show the new president exactly who really runs Washington. We shall wait and watch. Could our dreams really come true?