Live From New York, it's Hillary & Sarah!

Amy & Tina work SO well together & I had seen Amy do Hillary before, but, of course, this was the first time that Tina did Sarah Palin...and she was dead on...especially with that quasi American-Canadian accent of hers...

Also loved Amy/Hillary's suggestion that the MSM (Main Stream Media) "grow a pair" and stop soft-pedaling the Palin story, or she would lend them hers!! :-)

Palin "an intensely political choice"?? Nah, John McCain wouldn't do THAT!

Karl Christian Rove is apparently part of the the McCain Presidential Campaign "brain" trust, so you know he had to have had SOME input on choosing Alaska Governor and former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate. Being that McCain had previously only met Palin once before asking her to be his running mate, good ol' Karl has to have his slimy fingerprints all over this stroke-of-(NOT) genius decision!

Not that consistency in words or actions is Mr. Rove's or his party's forte, but before Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, when there was talk of possibly choosing Tim Kaine, the Governor of Virginia, as the Dem's VP nominee, our Mr. Rove had this to say when he was interviewed on Face The Nation (as you read his words, think about McCain's choice of Palin):

With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years, he’s been able but undistinguished. I don’t think people could really name a big, important thing that he’s done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it’s smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It’s not a big town. So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I’m really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States?'

(Thanks to Crooks & Liars for this quote.)

I wonder how good ol' Karl justifies McCain's blatantly & "intensely political choice" of Palin? Just wait, he'll whip up some half-baked double-talk to try to convince us that we don't see what we know we see.

According to the 2000 US Census, Wasilla, Alaska had a population of 5,469; Richmond, Virginia had a population of 197,790 (that's 36 times larger than Wasilla). The state of Alaska had 626,932 people in 2000 compared to the state of Virginia's population of 7,078,515 (11 times more people than in Alaska). I wonder if that concerns Karl at all??? Wait--I forgot--we're talking about Karl "I-Have-THE-Math" Rove; of course, he's not concerned.

So, according to Karl's "logic," and considering he is so intimately involved in the McCain campaign, you HAVE to assume that John McCain, in picking his running mate, must have been thinking, "You know what? I’m really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States."

Bottom line (for me), McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was more than an "intensely political choice", it was a pure desperation move in an attempt to woo all those former Hillary voters who were disappointed that she didn't win the Democratic nomination & to shore up his support amongst the far right social conservatives. He might be right about making the fundies happy, but McCain must think that the only thing that matters to the Hillary voters is the gender of the candidate & that Palin's stance on the issues is irrelevant, because Sarah Palin & Hillary Clinton disagree on 95% of the time (only an estimate based on what I've seen so far on Palin's political stances thus far).

Being that Palin is a true dyed-in-the-wool Pat Buchanan-loving right-winger, John McCain knows that his choice for VP will give the ultra-conservatives of his party (who aren't necessarily ecstatic about him personally) a convenient case of the warm-and-fuzzies while probably believing he's getting a two-fer in throwing a bone to the Clinton supporters by showing that he's firmly in touch with his post-feminist side.

If there really are any true-blue Clinton supporters who intend to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket on the sole basis that one of the candidates possesses two X chromosomes (especially considering Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's longtime REAL support for women's rights), then they (1) must not care that Palin says she can't stand Hillary Clinton's "whining"; (2) were never really paying attention to and/or don't care about what Hillary stood/stands for; and (3) were never really considering voting for Obama/Biden in the first place.

Oh yeah, and that line that the McCain campaign loves using about being ready to lead on "Day One" as a way to make people believe that Obama somehow ISN'T ready, has REALLY gone out the window with the choice of Palin, as has the last vestige of the illusion that John McCain has the judgment necessary to effectively lead the world's only superpower. On military & foreign policy issues, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like Henry Kissinger!

How hollow now ring the words of another of the McCain campaign's favorite taglines, "Country First"? This desperate move belies the patriotic theme that the Republicans have tried to hone to a fine art & reveals the same old tired, ugly hypocrisy of just another politician whose real objective is the same as it ever was: "Election First". The Rove/Bush political playbook obviously hasn't changed much since the glory days of the 2000 and 2004 elections: fire up the true-believers & the foot soldiers on the fringe right, while playing "Divide & Conquer" in an attempt to pick up a few of what the Republicans see as the sore losers on the other side intent on cutting their noses off to spite their faces. For most of us, of course, this single choice removes all doubt that in 2008, for the Republicans, it is still, still, still, Party Before Country; all the manufactured impassioned insistence to the contrary reminds me of the line by Shakespeare in Macbeth--"a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

In reading one of the online Alaska newspapers, the Anchorage Daily News, I thought it was telling how Alaska's Republican State Senate President, Lyda Green (who is from Wasilla) and presumably knows the state's governor pretty well (almost certainly MUCH better than John McCain knows her), greeted the news of Palin being McCain's Chosen One: "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" Ouch! That's gotta hurt!

Democratic Party strategist, Paul Begala, was spot-on when he wrote for CNN:

For months, the McCainiacs have said they will run on his judgment and experience. In his first presidential decision, John McCain has shown that he is willing to endanger his country, potentially leaving it in the hands of someone who simply has no business being a heartbeat away from the most powerful, complicated, difficult job in human history.

As for the VP debate that is scheduled to take place on October 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, it should be interesting to see Joe Biden & Sarah Palin on stage together discussing the important issues of the day, and explaining why they each feel qualified to be, as Paul put it, "a heartbeat from" the ultimate job promotion.

Sept. 1, 2008 P.S. John Kerry says McCain's choice of Palin shows that McCain is a "prisoner of the Right Wing" of his party.

You heard it here second

Obama in a Blowout: The Presidential Election Will Not Be Close

By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2008.

Charisma, change and vision vs. a gaffe-prone spent force: Obama will beat McCain and win 300 to 350 electoral votes.

In early December 2007, at a time when Hillary Clinton was tracking 20-plus points ahead of the Democratic field in national polls, I published an article contending that Hillary Clinton was an inherently weak candidate, a beatable candidate, and that Barack Obama would be a stronger match against Republicans.

I argued that she had the highest "unfavorable" rating of anyone who ever had run for the presidency; that she was the only Democratic candidate who could unite and energize the Republican base; that she was running 10 to 15 points behind in generic Democrat vs. Republican presidential polls; that her head-to-head matchups with the Republican candidates were poor; that in Iowa, where she was the only female candidate with seven men, she was polling only 26 percent; that several Democratic U.S. Senate candidates had told me she would pull the ticket down in their states; and that Bill was a potentially large, uncontrollable liability (even I did not know how true that prediction would become!). Hillary never was "inevitable." The evidence of her imminent demise was there for anyone who wanted to look.

OK, that was then, this is now.

The November presidential election is not going to be close. Barack Obama is going to beat John McCain by 8 to 10 points in the national popular vote and win 300 to 350 electoral votes. Obama is going to wipe out McCain mano a mano.

I am far more confident making this prediction than I was in predicting Hillary's demise. There are many reasons why.

The Political Environment

The Republican Party is led -- and branded -- by an extraordinarily unpopular president, whose policies McCain has staunchly defended and supported (95 percent voting congruence in 2007). In the recent CBS News/NYTimes poll, Bush is at 28 percent approval, 65 percent disapproval; in the Hart/Newhouse poll, he is at 27 percent approval, 66 percent disapproval. While some presidents have fallen to low levels in the past, what is truly remarkable about Bush is how long-term and persistent voter disapproval of him has been, and the depth of voter sentiment: A May 12 Washington Post/ABC poll showed only 15 percent of voters "strongly approve," while 52 percent "strongly disapprove."

Voters think, correctly, that the country is on the wrong track. In the Hart/Newhouse poll, 15 percent of voters said the country was headed in the "right direction," while an astounding 73 percent said "wrong direction." Remember, these polls include all voters, not just Democrats.

On issues, Republicans are on the short end of everything except the military and national security. Among voters, in the NYTimes/CBS poll, when asked which party is better, on health care 63 percent say Democrats while only 19 percent say Republicans; the economy, 56 percent say Democrats, 28 percent say Republicans; sharing your moral values, 50 percent say Democrats, 34 percent say Republicans; and, dealing with Iraq, 50 percent say Democrats, 34 percent say Republicans. The Democratic Party has a 52 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable rating; the Republican Party has a 33 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable rating. A whopping 63 percent say the United States needs to withdraw from Iraq within 12 months; McCain wants to stay roughly forever -- and attack Iran. The Washington Post/ABC poll asked, "Which party do you trust to do a better job coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years?" Democrats were chosen over Republicans, 53 percent to 32 percent.

The U.S. economy is sinking (while McCain has said he doesn't know much about the economy); gas prices are skyrocketing; the housing market has collapsed and people are losing their homes; and the Iraq Recession shows no signs of abating.

McCain has been able to stay close to parity in polls matching him with Obama, but that is the product of the bashing Obama has taken from the Clinton campaign. Once that internal scrap is behind him and he can go head to head against McCain, his polling is going to soar.

Even in fund-raising, a traditional Republican strength, the Republicans are at a disadvantage. At last reported count, Obama had $51 million in cash on hand; McCain had $11 million. In the combined cash of the national party committees, Republicans had $55.5 million; Democrats $87.1 million. The netroots has raised unprecedented amounts of money for Democrats, especially Obama; labor unions have gone deeper into their pockets and are raising more money for Democrats than in prior elections; and, even business PACs have given more money to Democrats! Business blows with the wind, and it knows which way the wind is blowing.

Simply put, this is the worst possible time for any Republican to be running for president. And this is not simply my opinion; it is an opinion that has many adherents in the Republican Party and among traditional Republican supporters. Representative Tom Davis, from Virginia, in an internal memo to Republicans, recently wrote, "The political atmosphere facing Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006.The Republican brand is in the trash can. [I]f we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."

The Candidates

While many ardent Democrats would disagree with this assessment, I personally consider McCain to be an honorable, decent man. I have enormous respect for -- and cannot forget -- the fact that he declined the opportunity to be released from a North Vietnamese prison because his father had been a Navy admiral and chose instead to stay with his comrades for 5½ years. Very few of us would have done that -- I know I would not have. There is a loyalty and integrity there that we need to remember and honor. And, despite efforts to disparage the "maverick" label, the reality is that, for a substantial part of his political career, he was a Republican maverick on a variety of issues, including the environment, immigration, campaign reform, taxes and the budget. These are not inconsequential disagreements with the Republican Party, and he has been almost singular in being willing to disagree with the Republican establishment. But that is the previous incarnation of McCain, not the version we've seen for the last four years or the version who has to run between now and November.

The problem with McCain is that his brain is no longer working. There is something wrong. Many doctor friends of mine hypothesize Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is consistent with his 5½ years of great stress in prison and which can explain his violent temper, his memory lapses and his frequent mental disconnects. It also is possible that he is suffering mini-strokes, which cause momentary double vision, partial blackouts and confusion, and which could explain why he can say incredibly stupid things, sometimes the same dumb thing several times in one day, without appearing to understand what he just said. Whatever the specific cause, he is not healthy, and mentally he is struggling to hold it together.

What we are going to see in the general election from McCain is a ton of mistakes. The very thing the press likes about him, his candor and shoot-from-the-hip style, is going to kill him when the full weight of media attention is trained on him. He never has been a good speaker with a prepared text (last night, his speech was characteristically wooden, with several word confusions). The media has always loved the quick, gritty, candid McCain, but that version is gone; he now is a damaged, slower-thinking McCain, but his habits will remain the same. He will still try to be the quick wit, the maverick; it just isn't going to work. And while McCain is still capable (with help) of firing off some zingers that hit, he will be unable to sustain a narrative -- or fool the American voters -- for the next five months. This is not just about being 71; it is about being a very old 71. It might be sad to watch, but I for one will have no sympathy. There is too much at stake.

Obama is the perfect candidate for Democrats, and a nightmare for McCain. Obama, who by every metric is a brilliant strategist, thinker and speaker, is going to run circles around McCain. McCain, who is not a very good speaker even on his best day, will appear slow, befuddled and confused; he will make gaffes. Obama will be charismatic, smart, thoughtful, high-minded, alert and substantive. It will be no contest. And adding to Obama's natural advantages, McCain has just enough integrity to try to match up with Obama on issues. In that debate on substance, Obama's overwhelming intellectual superiority and mental alertness will become obvious. There will be the believers, who have jumped aboard the Obama campaign and will continue to multiply, but there also is going to be another type of vote that is going to swing heavily to Obama: the default vote. Voters are going to default to Obama because it will become obvious that McCain simply is not up to the task of being president.

This is going to be the first not-close presidential election since 1988. You heard it here first.

Your Grandpa for President???

Read this on CNN.com (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/28/cafferty-age-a-bigger-factor-in-election-than-race-gender/) today, and I needed to share...

While the Democrats sweat it out over how voters perceive race and gender in this election, maybe it's time for the Republicans to take a look at how Americans feel about electing a 71-year-old man.

If John McCain wins, he will be the oldest person ever to serve a first term as president. And a new survey out suggests that the public might have more doubts about voting for someone of McCain's age for president than they would for an African-American or a woman.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 72% of those surveyed say voters are ready to elect a qualified black candidate, 18% say they're not. Meanwhile, 71% say Americans are ready to vote for a woman, 20% say they're not. But only 61% say the voters are prepared to vote for a person over 70, while 29% say they're not. Not exactly encouraging numbers for McCain and the Republicans.

Obama vs. Hasselbeck

The Senator-Who-Would-Be-President will have his chance to discuss timely political issues with Barbara, Whoopi, Joy, Sherri & Survivor-Loser-John-McSame-Cheerleader Elizabeth Hasselbeck this Friday when he is the guest of ABC's The View.

I'll lay odds that the GOP's Far-Right Mommy Of The Year winner is just chomping at the bit to make sure that as much of the conversation revolves around Jeremiah Wright as possible. I'm sure she'll push as many Hillary buttons as possible too, for good measure. She's gotta keep the Democrats' in-fighting going right along so Dubya's grandpa-protégé can conserve his strength for November.

What Keith Said...

I just can't put it any better than my hero, Keith Olbermann...

The Ads

Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas & Vermont are holding their primaries on March 4. Nearly everyone believes that this is a "do-or-die" moment in Hillary's campaign: either she wins the biggest prizes that day (Texas and Ohio) or her campaign is virtually mortally wounded, politically-speaking.

I bring this subject up because I read on the Advocate website that Barack, in an attempt to cut into Hillary's long-standing support amongst the GLBT community, has recently bought full-page ads in some Texas & Ohio GLBT publications. The ads are supposed to be running starting today.

I was able to find one of those ads online. It's a generic version &, according to Barack's campaign, the exact ads that will be published will "include specific information on voting in those states and how to get involved with the campaign locally."

Here's what the ad will look like:

POLITICS ALERT!!

So, being the semi-professional political nerd that I am, I went over to CNN's website to look at the primary/caucus election results of this past Super Tuesday. I had noticed in previous similar elections this year that the number of people casting votes in the Democratic contests were nearly always greater than in the Republican contests.

So I went through & added up the number of votes cast for all the Democratic candidates & all those cast for the Republican candidates (including the non-committed or no preference votes) and here are a few little nuggets I found interesting:

Disclaimer: in the interest of full disclosure, some of the numbers from some of the states do not reflect 100% of the votes being counted, but nearly all of them showed 99% to 100% having been counted. For my purposes, these numbers are more than adequate.

• In the 17 states that held both a Democratic & a Republican primary or caucus (Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah), there were an unofficial total of 22,964,136 votes cast on Feb. 5.
• Of the nearly 23 million votes cast, over 63% (14,506,808) were cast in the Democratic race; the remaining 37% (8,457,328) were cast in the Republican race. That's over 6 million more votes (6,049,480) that were cast in the Democratic races!
• Of the 17 states with elections in both major parties, the Democrats had more voters in 15 of the 17! Only in McCain's home state of Arizona & in Republican Beehive Heaven, Utah, did more Republicans cast votes! Even in typically "red" states like Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, North Dakota & Tennessee, more people voted in the Democratic contests!
• If you take the total number of votes received in these 17 states by all the candidates regardless of party affiliation, the Republican with the most overall votes, John McCain, would have come in at 3rd place. Both Hillary Clinton (with the most number of overall votes) & Barack Obama (with the 2nd highest total) earned more than TWICE the number of votes than McCain did!
• Even John Edwards, who bowed out of the race before Super Tuesday, got more votes (401,000+) than Ron Paul (381,000+), who is still a candidate.

Unofficial Totals Of Votes Cast,
Selected States,
Per Candidate,
In Super Tuesday Contests, 2/5/2008

Clinton
7,122,201

Obama
6,957,328

McCain
3,422,762

Romney
2,875,270

Huckabee
1,570,375

Edwards
401,744

Paul
381,641

Giuliani
198,185

Uncommitted/Other/No Preference
34,630

So, it seems to me that there may be just a little more excitement (or, at least more voter interest) in the Democratic race. It may just be wishful thinking, but that seems to auger well for the donkeys...if they can take that interest & turn it into support in November! I really think that this is our race to lose...but you can't discount that. Democrats have had too much experience at losing their spine as well as their way. Still I hope...

Two Days & Counting

So, it seems that Barack Obama has won big in South Carolina! Now it's "Good-bye, Palmetto State" & "Hello, Sunshine State!"

In case I haven't told you, I am really excited to get to vote for Barack on Tuesday. ;-) He is such an inspiration & he gives me hope that things can be different...things just NEED so desperately to be different!

As if I needed another reason to vote for Barack, I read an Op-Ed piece today on the New York Times (link at the bottom of this post) website by President Kennedy's only surviving child, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who is endorsing Senator Obama for president. The title of the article (A President Like My Father) sums it all up (at least for me) & the first paragraph she writes explains it all so well:

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

As I have said before, this vote I will make for Barack is NOT an anti-Hillary or an anti-John Edwards or anti-anyone (except maybe anti-Dubya) vote because any of the current candidates from the Democratic Party who wins the nomination is going to get my vote in November. For the first time in too long, mine will be a pro-hope vote. It's true that Senator Obama may not be one of the old lions of the Senate, and he may not have all the connections that a lot of old politicos do in Washington, but I personally don't think being a part of the "good-old-boys" network is necessarily a reason to vote for someone you hope will change & shake things up in our country. We need to challenge the "conventional wisdom," not give in to it!

On a nearly-similar issue, I was glancing through CNN's website (as I am apt to do when I first thing in the morning in place of reading the newspaper), I read about Barack's huge win in South Carolina & I noticed that CNN had exit polling info with voter characteristics for each state that has held caucuses or primaries so far. Of course, my mind started racing thinking about who the "typical Democratic voter" is as compared to the "typical Republican voter," and then I started thinking about how those numbers looked for each state, so I pulled out the old Excel spreadsheet (I LOVE ME SOME MICROSOFT EXCEL...I know it's a weird thing to love, but I'm wierd, so what ya gonna do???) & plugged in the numbers that I found on CNN's website & I came up with this:


So, according to CNN's polling numbers, the average Democratic voter, so far in the primaries & caucuses that have taken place tends to be a younger female whereas the typical Republican primary voter tends to be an older male. It also appears that the older male Republican primary voter tends to earn more than the younger female Democratic primary voter. I know, you're surprised by that, right?!?! :-/

What really strikes me by this is not only does the much-vaunted "gender gap" exist (at least where the primaries/caucuses is concerned), but there also appears to be an "age gap". In every state that has held both parties' primaries/caucuses, a greater percentage of the voters on the Democratic side are under the age of 30 as compared to the Republicans! The opposite is true for those 65 and over: a greater percentage of Republican primary voters is elderly as compared to the Democrats. So it seems that the old guard is represented mostly by the "Grand" Old Party & the up-and-comers are tending to be more Democratic. That doesn't hurt my feelings any, let me tell you.

Anyway, 2 days & counting 'til I get to vote for a man about whom JFK's daughter wrote,

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

It's about time.

New York Times article - link=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27kennedy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Obamamania?!?

So I've been torn for a while over the plethora (you like that word?!?!) of choices we of the Democratic persuasion have where our presidential candidates are concerned.

Don't tell anyone, but, SOMETIMES, I miss Bill Clinton. I miss the prosperity in which nearly everyone shared during his administration. I miss the optimism of that time. I miss not feeling like an enemy of my government simply because I don't want to give up my rights.

What I don't miss is the nearly daily stories of Monicagate & the he-says-she-says circus that the republicans insisted on showcasing during his administration. Sure, Bill Clinton was wrong for using the highest office in the land to further his sexual indiscretions, but just as wrong was the elephant party's insistence on using every lever of power at their disposal to focus government's attention on one man's prurient desires instead of making life better for the people there were sent to represent. The republican party's lust to get Bill, a man they saw as an illegitimate & undeserving occupant of the White House, was as blatant & obvious as Bill's lust to get...whatever it is he was trying to get.

I don't mean to air already-over-aired dirty laundry, but I wanted to make a point about Hillary. I would wager that I agree with 98.6% or more of Hillary's stances. She is a good woman (in my humble opinion) with a good heart & a desire to fix so much that Bill's successor has destroyed & spoiled for the rest of us. Her governmental experience & public life as First Lady have made her more-than-able to, as she claims in her ads, to hit the ground running. I have no doubt of that. I won't vote for her in the Florida primary not because I don't trust her or because she holds political points of view with which I vehemently disagree. I won't vote for her because I am ready for something new. Like so many other Americans, I want (I need) a fresh start & a fresh face. Hillary has a place in the public discourse & she has so much to contribute to bringing honor back to our country, but, on January 29th, I want to send a message to my party that we need a break with the past & that we have to look forward to a future that gives us all hope that the 7+ year long Bushmare is over. Hillary--as the head of our ticket--doesn't seem to represent that for me...at least not now.

Of the remaining candidates, I am most fired-up about Barack Obama & John Edwards. They are two truly fresh faces that give me a reason to stand up & cheer. They remind me why I've been a Democrat ever since I could vote. They are not perfect people, to be sure, and they disagree with me on civil marriage equality (but, then again, so do most of the other Dems in the race), but they also seem to me to be men who are willing to listen & open to reason. They both talk about the innate unfairness & inequality of the status quo. They both seem to have no interest in business as usual. Not many people I know do.

John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, to me, is simply a marvel! She refuses to allow her illness to keep her from saving the country she loves so much by helping the man she loves so much to get his message out. She knows that it's not really about her...or about John...but about her children & everyone else's children. She & John seek to give voice to those who either cannot speak for themselves or who are never heard at all in a town where only money talks. They are also good, decent people who make me proud of my party...something that has been a rarity for me for a while.

Then there's Barack. Barack Obama is about a year older than me. WOW! That's just amazing to me! Maybe it's just me, but when you think of the junior senator from Illinois, you can't help but think of potential! Barack is not gay, of course, but with his exposure to so many different kinds of people (his father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas, and they met at the University of Hawaii & Barack was raised for some time in Indonesia), I truly think he knows what being different is all about, because he has lived it. No need to explain to him how it is to be seen as an outsider. He's not (yet) an equal civil marriage rights advocate, but he also thinks that gay people still deserve the same rights as anyone else & that our relationships deserve equal protection. I wish it were different & I wish he would just cut to the chase & come around to my point of view. It will happen one day, I know. Where GLBT equality is concerned, things just don't ever go as quickly as I think they should. A "no-brainer" to me may not be so to someone else...but at least Obama's (and John's & Hillary's & all the other Democrats') heart is not closed to changing at some point. Call me an optimist...

Like John Edwards, Barack represents for me, a fresh face. You obviously also cannot escape the fact that it is also a black face. The way I see it, most of us are craving so badly anyone who is most UNLIKE our current crop of "leaders". The difference between George DUBYA Bush and Barack Obama goes WAY beyond skin color. They are also people with two different life paths & life views. Dubya came from a life of privilege where his Mom & Dad were always there to bail him out (probably quite literally). Barack's Mom & Dad divorced & he lived with his mom in Hawaii & Indonesia. When it came time to find a career, Dubya's parents bailed him out of a bad oil deal & then helped their son to purchase part of the Texas Rangers baseball team & then later sell it for 24 times what he had invested. After graduating from Harvard, Barack went to work for a legal firm that specialized in civil rights legislation. The difference is like night & day...in so many ways!

Barack Obama's constant mantra of change & his dedication to doing what is right for ALL OF US & not just for those of us fortunate to be able to buy his ear speaks to more than just people like me. Like so many rats abandoning a sinking ship of state, republicans who have finally opened their eyes & their nostrils & have begun to catch a whiff of the poisonous brew of Dubya's willful incompetence & drunken cowboy attitude are slowly but surely shifting allegiances. The British internet newspaper, Times Online, for example, reported last year that,

"Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing."

I also found a Harris poll reported that, nationwide, political Independents say they would consider voting for Obama over Clinton by 37% to 29%. Twice as many Republicans said they would consider voting for Obama as would consider voting for Clinton (14% vs 7%). That tells me that people of every political stripe are at least willing to listen to what he has to say. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems that Americans may be ready to ignore the labels & discard their pre-conceived notions to support a man who is what he seems to be: a man who dares to hope for better & who is willing to fight for it...and for us.

That's where my heart & my mind stand right now...as I write this. Hillary Clinton & John Edwards (& Bill Richardson & Dennis Kucinich & Mike Gravel) are not anathema to me. They are not my enemies. I would/will vote for any one of them in the general election, if they get my party's nomination. Except for John Edwards & Barack Obama, however, I have to wonder if my potential presidential vote in 2008 will just be anti-the-republican-candidate instead of pro-the-Democratic candidate. It would be so nice to vote my hope instead what has been left to me, lo these many years: voting out of sheer frustration.

If our country is fortunate enough to be presented with the chance to vote for either John Edwards or Barack Obama, I know that my vote will be made with a weariness for the way things are now & a longing for the promise of blessed change...not just change in office holders, but a national change of heart!