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There’s a bit of complaining going on.
Get over it. Obama is going to be president. And, as an extra added bonus, the republican isn’t.
I supported another candidate in the primary. In fact, I worked my tail off for that other candidate leading up to the February 5th primary.
A friend and colleague, he an enthusiastic supporter of Obama, asked me around that time, “With your opposition to the war, how could you support Hillary?” I mumbled something about pragmatism. What I really should have said is, “We should both be supporting Dennis Kucinich, going by our ideology. But we’ve already determined what each of us is, now we’re just haggling over the price.”
That being said, I’m thoroughly pleased that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. Note to our incompetent media: this won’t actually happen until January 20, 2009, so quit whining that he needs to do something this very instant about the current economic mess. Uh, dubya occupies the space until that day. You enabled him. It’s the world you helped create, so live in it like the rest of us.
I believe I was circumspect if I offered criticism of Barack Obama and/or his campaign during the primary process. What made me hesitant about getting on the bandwagon was the tenor of some of his “true believers”. Finally, I had to decide to let that go, given my constant mantra reaching back all the way into 2007, “candidates and campaigns are not responsible for, nor can they control their amateur fans.”
I had to let it go. It was difficult. Right after Hillary conceded we started getting fundraising calls from the Obama campaign. I’d calmly reply, “Call me back when Hillary is the vice-presidential nominee” then I’d hang up. I was always going to vote for the Democratic party nominee (pace Joe Lieberman, as if that was ever a possibility). There were other state and local campaigns to work on, too. I could expend my energy there. I wasn’t going to put a damn bumper sticker on my car, and I wasn’t going to put a yard sign in my yard, let alone join the “true believers” in phone banking. My spouse expressed the same sentiments.
The bumper sticker thing was easy, up until the last weeks before the election, because the local Democratic Party headquarters didn’t get its order in for over two months. They did finally get here. They’re still on my vehicle – triumphalism in the face of “the cult of the lost cause” is a good thing. The “hesitancy” over the yard sign went pretty quickly.
My spouse hates working the phones. In fact, when asked to do so for Hillary during the primaries she refused. Point blank. I hate working the phones. I hate going door to door.
In the final two months of the campaign we found ourselves at the local Obama campaign field office working the phones. My spouse became the volunteer supervisor for the GOTV phone bank. I worked the phones. I even went door to door, for God’s sake.
Why?
We’re Democrats. That’s what Democrats do. That, and the ugly alternative, four more years of the same, was too much of a horrific possibility to ponder.
One night as I was working the phones I pointed out to our Obama Campaign field organizer the irony of me, an Alaskan by birth, wearing my University of Arizona hoodie, making phone calls for Obama. He chuckled and replied, “You forgot to add that you supported Hillary in the primaries.”
Indeed I did.
And he hasn’t given given me an adorable kitten either!
The better candidate has the tough job starting in January.. The last four years have been the worst Presidential term in history, no doubt about it. So there’s a lot of mess to cleanup.
I never put a bumper sticker on my car – I had Jay Nixon on my car for 2 years. (I refuse to do more than one bumper sticker). My one sign in front of my house was Obama.
I voted for Obama in the primary. But I was fully prepared to support whoever won the Democratic primary (and yes every one of those on-line “tests” told me I should vote for Kucinich).
Truth be told, although I considered myself an Obama supporter, I didn’t really like Obama supporters as a group – until the end when ALL democrats came together.
I reduced my commenting at almost every national political blog this past year to almost nothing because I disliked the supporters of ALL the candidates who made it almost impossible to have an actual discussion about politics. I volunteered through the Obama campaign here in St. Louis but never felt at all close to the people who had been volunteering for Obama for months and months. And in fact on election day I ended up working the polls through the Jay Nixon campaign. Nobody from “my” Obama group ever called me to ask and Jay did so I said yes to him.
Now that the campaign is over, I’m glad everyone got involved and I hope the organization that came to parts of Missouri is long lasting. That being said, I disliked the St. Louis organization of small groups of volunteers meeting in parking lots (ugh) and hope the St. Louis Dems figure out a way to make it more organized for the next election. Truthfully I think turnout in St. Louis City should have been higher.
More than anything I long for the day that the entire cabinet is picked, Obama is sworn in, Nixon is sworn in – and we can move on to talking about progessive issues and leave the politics of personality behind for at least … 6 months. Until the next campaign starts getting heated up 🙂
but believed that he did not have what it took to effectively put his beliefs into practice as president, so I never took him seriously as a candidate. In reference to your title, I believe that it takes a politician to handle politics. Good politicians like good managers everywhere are not necessarily evil corrupt people, but people who can set a goal, assess the environment and chart the best course towards the goal.
What I read about Obama convinced me that he was a rarity a person of real convictions, who nevertheless understood that you have, if you will forgive the cliche, to be able to heard cats in order to realize those convictions. The two poles of his character seemed to be an effective Chicago pol, and the leader who make the speech on race that moved me to become not just a supporter, but an enthusiastic supporter.
Apropos of all this, Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post today about the relationship of Obama’s pragmatism to progressivism and progressive complaints about his actions to date. I don’t agree with all that he says, but I think he is right on one point: Obama is a pragmatist who is concerned with what will work not necessarily what should work. What Greenwald does not emphasize sufficiently is Obama’s very explicit, and dare I say, progressive goals.
I will certainly give him time to role out his team and begin the game before I begin trying to hold his feet to the fire.
The midterms started November 5!
I had serious reservations about both candidates, and I continue to have the same reservations I expressed during the convention. That didn’t keep me from working for Obama.