Crossposted from EDC
I must warn you that this is a very personal blog for me. There is nothing I take more seriously than my position among our readers. And there is nothing I take more seriously than my loyalty to a candidate, a cause, and a movement.
It was with a heavy heart that I watched John Edwards stand in New Orleans last week and tell us all that he was moving in a different direction. I have supported him since far before he even declared his intentions to run again in 2008. And I followed with joy and pride as he became the first to produce a health care plan, an energy package, a poverty initiative, and embraced the beauty of the new media movement and young voters.
I worked hard to raise money, I volunteered in caucus and primary states, I stood with friends beside him, at rallies before him, and walked behind him as we marched toward progress. I watched with great honor as the all too often sound-byte fight was moved to a war of issues. I wept with pride as we forced the US to wake up to poverty and to remember the moral failures in New Orleans. For never, in my short life, have I felt like I was part of a movement toward the beautiful future that was not quite out of our grasp.
I wander the web now, lost and searching for my candidate. I've seen them all - I've shaken everyone's hand sometimes twice and I've heard speech after speech and debate after debate until I feel as though I can recite their positions myself and hold my own candidate forum in my mind. I've had arguments with everyone's supporters before the close of the campaign and after.
And today, I've firmly decided to endorse my new candidate.
I would be happy with any candidate. I think all have been extraordinarily qualified. I think many have a vision of our country that I can put my passion behind. And I firmly believe that all of them can and will win the White House in November - even with John McCain at the top of the ticket for the GOP.
To explain to you my new endorsement I must explain some of the very early conversations I've had with supporters of each candidate. I come out of a very strong world of feminist empowerment. With strong and powerful women in my family. I surround myself with amazing women who enhance my own passion, idealism, and power. All of whom I love, support, and respect deeply. And nothing caused more frustrated and arguments between us than our discussions of Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I love Hillary. I have always loved Hillary Clinton. I have posted blogs where people tore me apart for my faith that I put in her, my respect for her hard work, and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that have been unfairly put before her that she has cleared with grace and dignity.
As I began to discuss my support of John Edwards I became a quick and convenient target. Despite this unfaltering dedication to her I have had my loyalty, my feminism, indeed my femininity, and worse my intelligence called into question by her supporters who are so forcefully militant and demeaning and it caused me to question my positive feelings for the great Senator that I have always admired.
It was as if they were all so entrenched with anti-Hillary Hatred that they wanted to super-impose that upon me. Suddenly I was unfairly labeled because if I didn't support Hillary I was therefore a Hillary Hater and everything I did politically must now be called into question or demeaned in some way to such an extent that I could very easily have become exactly what they said I was.
The best example of this is a blog piece I read on Huffington Post that actually forced me to write this blog today.
"Having seen Obama mania up close and personal the media didn't make it up, but the way they cover this race -- the language they use to talk about him, his charisma, his "youth movement," his momentum and his star quality all stand in sharp contrast to the way they pick apart every detail of Clinton.
"They obsess over her in irrational and completely contradictory ways and just seem to find it unseemly that a middle aged woman won't quietly remove herself from the national stage and stop making a bunch of men under 35 uncomfortable with her very presence"...
(it closes with this) "I apologize in advance for quoting Fish's post in its entirety but I think it deserves to be read. If Hillary Clinton does pull this thing off, she will have done so against the seemingly insurmountable weight of 16 years of being the target of misogyny and hatred that have focused into a narrative that has also been appropriated by many on the so-called "left" to take her down -- and certainly by the media.
I guess she didn't get the memo -- middle aged women are supposed to dry up, go home and be invisible."
It is this kind of thought that makes me shake my head and think about how exhausted I am. It is the defensive gesticulating during debates while shouting "We are ALL FOR CHANGE!" that makes me shake my head and feel sad for the people that are clearly missing the point.
And while all of this I watched in living color high definition, I was understood, embraced, and respected by supporters of Sen. Barack Obama who told me that Edwards was a good man, with good policies, and most said he was their second choice.
One reason that I supported Edwards was his powerful campaign for change. Edwards never had to say "Change" for people to feel it, see it, and understand what he was talking about. His kind of change was not just the change of a leader, it was not just a change of point of view, not just a change in policy, or a change in ideas - but a change in operation, in attitude, in organization, in inspiration, in focus.... It was a change to our party, in the way we communicate as a country, a change in WHO we are as Democrats.
This change is evident in the divisions between Kerry and Dean, of Lieberman and Lamont, of Truman and Kennedy, and of Clinton and Obama. It is a difference between entitlement and empowerment, a difference between elections and movements, of top down and bottom up, between votes and voices, between parties and people.
I will never lose hold of my partisanship. Indeed, I've been known to speak out against Obama's urgency to "bring people together" because I don't trust many of those he would want to bring to my side, nor will I ever. I lived through the 1990's. I've seen the Hunting of a President. But the millions of unheard voices easily squashed by disenfranchisement, manipulation, and circumstance deserve to join in a party that will hear them, embrace them, and forget past transgressions of poorly cast ballots.
Save inside the beltway - we are indeed one people. We are indeed one nation. And the past complacency from those whose voices come at merely a whisper can be empowered and inspired to stand strong with us.
"We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
We don't just need a change in leadership, we need a transformation of attitudes, of country, of ideas, of voices that earn power to speak louder. Change is not an abstract notion of partisanship, of officials, instead it is a movement into a new millennium that requests of us something greater than a changing of the guard or a switch in policy.
There is an extraordinary voyage ahead of us. And when I am faced with the cynicism that too often comes with working in politics, I fight to look at the larger picture. I reach toward the end of a rope that sustains hope on a violent ocean of anxiety and fear. And I am strengthened by the prayer to my fellow men and women to rise and master these moments of possibility and opportunity. Yes, we can.
My endorsement for Sen. Obama is not one I arrived to first, and even now my endorsement is not one of a man but for an idea, a hope, a powerful and glorious change, a movement, a people.
Please, cast your ballots tomorrow with your vision of America firm in hand, and please cast it for Barack Obama.
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