(I need help migrating/getting back online my blog archives from 2002 to to 2007…if anyone can help me with this I have no idea where to start or where some of it even is).
Back in the spring of 2004 I blogged about Barack Obama and how all would fall in love with him (I of course cannot link to it since my archives are down). I wrote that he was progressive, eloquent, and handsome as sin. I wanted him to be my state senator. I didn’t think he would be running for President until 2012 but I called everything else pretty accurately (yeah I am smug). I will be voting for Barack Obama in November or maybe even early in September via an absentee ballot. However, I am no longer smitten with him.
Now, that we are this close and it looks like he can actually win it, I feel I can now criticize. He is the best we’ve got but not the best. I disagree with him on many things and find him to be too conservative for my liking. I bet his personal politics or so I would like to think are more progressive than the ones he portrays.
I assume his political ideology that is demonstrated is the one he needs to portray in order to get elected. I believe that he could not get elected if he were to come out and say for example “I believe in gay marriage and anything less could at best only be separate but equal and as a black man in this country I am offended as hell by that idea”. I would like to believe that at his core he is offended but that the exterior is what has gotten him this far.
I like this image, and I stole it from my compadre El Tin, it sums up how I view Obama.
Something to think about:
1. He is a politician.
2. He is trying to reach consensus, something our political system has cast aside.
3. The presidency is more about getting the public to pressure congress to make changes that to actually make the changes (or current president turned that on its head – getting the public to abdicate the pressure it put on congress so both could do whatever they wanted).
4. People are afraid of him (and change), so he needs to cast himself in a more conventional way.
5. You should never make political decisions (or any other for that matter) based on crushes.
So you may not like what you are hearing, but I think if elected he will change the political direction of the country towards something more palatable to the both of us.
Xolo, I agree with everything you said…and i played the role of a politician too i guess in that i waited to speak my mind until the moment i thought it was safe (that moment being now when he’s probably going to win it).