Proud to Vote Democratic This Year

I’ve received a lot of email asking me to stop linking to those politicians I disagree with and to write more about the politicians with which I agree.

I linked to an endorsement by The New Yorker and quoted a couple of paragraphs. That pretty much is exactly how I feel.

Mr. Obama knows that he is a relative newcomer. His choice of Vice President proves that he wanted to balance the ticket with somebody who has strengths in areas where Senator Obama may be less strong. I’m not sure that Obama thought he’d get the nomination when he started his campaign. This election has been running for a couple of years now and the primary season on the Democratic side was brutal. Battles like that put on display how a candidate will respond when in office.

Following the conventions, the craziest stuff has been said about Obama. I’ve never seen so many different and intensely personal attacks in one cycle. How Obama has responded has been, for lack of a better term, presidential.

There are several memes coming from conservatives: Terrorist! Marxist! Socialist! Deficit Spender! These are all irresponsible and if you compare the kinds of things the Obama campaign has gotten wrong versus right on a site like factcheck.org, he has run a much cleaner, better organized campaign than his opponents. He hasn’t resorted to name-calling or personal attacks.

Is Obama or the party perfect? No. No candidate is ever perfect. There is no such thing. But I can look past the imperfections much more easily this cycle. I like that Obama taught constitutional law. Especially given the dangerous ground the Bush/Cheney administration has trod.

I’m not going to lie. My main reason for voting Obama/Biden is that I feel like they’ve got what it takes to put aside the name calling and childish part of politics and really move this country forward. My inner ideologist loves the fact that Obama speaks in a calm, educated way and dares to use words like “hope”. We could use some hope about now.

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  • tracy

    well said, as always.

  • mscyndi

    I give Obama alot of credit for taking the high road in his campaign. Whether or not an indidvidual agrees with his campaign he has certainly put aside the name calling and gutter politics of the McCain/Palin ticket. He is presidential in how he has handled hmself throughout his campaign.

    Vote Obama!

  • http://jmo101in1001.blogspot.com jmo

    you forgot about all the idiots screaming muslim!
    being at texas a&m, it is especially bad. i’m sure you saw the video on cnn.com of the ridiculous anti-obama carnival hosted by the ytc on campus yesterday.

  • http://jmo101in1001.blogspot.com jmo

    yct*

  • http://andy.teamsoell.com andy

    Hear, hear! Perfectly put.

  • Lesley

    Agree with you 100% and only wish I was an American so I could vote for him too.

    This is an historic election and it wouldn’t surprise me to see celebrations around the world on or shortly after November 4th when he IS elected. The US has enormous global influence and everyone groaned audibly in 2000 and 2004. This year will bring much needed relief.

    99.9% of Canadians want Obama. :)

  • Lesley

    Btw, this may amuse you and your readers. The inimitable TBogg has posted a list of words and phrases he hopes never to hear again; his readers have added more. Quite the funny.
    http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2008/10/29/is-it-over-yet/

  • ShellyD

    I work in a small office in Las Vegas and I’m the ONLY Democrat (which is weird for me because usually it’s the other way around). You should hear my co-workers go on and on about Obama. They are completely convinced he is a socialist. They make it sound like it’s the end of their life as they know it if he gets elected. One of my co-workers even said she thinks Obama is evil and she was serious. WTF??? I have to be careful what I say around my boss though. Staunch Republican and I’m not going to risk rocking the boat because I need my job!!

  • Joanne

    Prediction: Dow will rise if Obama wins. Plunge if McCain does.

  • Becky

    Bravo, Jon. You’ve summed up my thoughts. When this began, I had plenty of doubts. The calmer Obama remained in reaction to the crazy, the more convinced I was that he could do the job. Maybe they did a lot of us a favor by helping us take the measure of the man as a leader.

  • http://www.blessourhearts.blogspot.com Ms. Moon

    Listen- when I early-voted today, I felt as if I were participating in history. This is momentous.

  • just beth

    word.

  • http://faydean.typepad.com faydean

    Being the lone dissenter is something I’m not unfamiliar with, obviously.

    So with that, here’s my take (I know you wait with baited breath).

    I will give you, Jon, that you have every right to vote as you feel. You are an American. But I will respectfully disagree that those of us who feel this man, who many really don’t know much about other than his suave public persona, has issues…some disturbing issues.

    This race will not be a landslide. There is half of this country, for whatever reason you’d like to throw out there (ie greedy, ignorant, racist) that are very much frightened of this man leading our nation. For as many Democrats as you know and bring to the table on this blog, I know just as many conservatives who all have major misgivings about Obama, and gasp, even some Dems too!

    What I don’t get is how you can so, across the board, just accept that your side’s views are “right” and all those people who disagree must be ignorant, greedy or racist. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t be true, because that’s not how human society works. No one entire side can be 100 percent correct.

    I don’t know alot of conservatives who feel necessarily 100 percent correct over their concerns over Obama or for their support of McCain. At least you did admit that, though you sounded just as firm in your support of Obama despite that admission. I can relate I guess, McCain is not my ideal candidate as a conservative. Anyway, what I do see and have seen, is a whole segment of the population who feels we don’t know enough about him, that he is questionable in his judgement and associations, that he’s not experienced enough, and because of this should not be given cart blanche over our country as it’s leader.

    There are simply too many pieces to a certain puzzle regarding Obama. You can disregard and cast aside each of them if you’d like (he loves to do this and it’s really quite sickening). But when you piece them together a pattern begins to emerge…a disturbing pattern. Perhaps it could be cleared if he’d allow more access to his records, stop giving campaign speeches for five minutes to actually say something that doesn’t feel like a lie. For many, he’s feels genuine. For many, many others he feels fake, false and truly unreadable. He has an air of someone being groomed…manuevered…manufactured.

    As my mother would say, there’s some not right…I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s just there. How I could see it and so many others not, I have no clue. I’m a new conservative, with years of liberal voting and idealism under my belt. As a former liberal, though I still am very socially liberal, I don’t trust this man as far as I could throw him.

    He reminds me of that television show you love to hate, the Hills…it’s supposed to be reality, but you know it just can’t be. No, it’s not. It’s scripted reality. Like that infomerical last night. You might have seen it as wonderful and uplifting. Me and many people I know were utterly creeped out by it. It felt like we were living in the Truman Show even having such a thing being done.

    Anyway, you will nail me to the floor on this, but I must give you a link to an article and hope you will read it and perhaps see something familiar. I will tell you now it is a Time essay on Hitler and his rise to power. It in no way relates to Obama. In fact, it’s from 1998. I recalled reading it and when I read your piece on Obama here I went in search for it. It honestly is not to compare the two men, really. I don’t think that Obama is the next Hitler. But what I do feel is that much of the demagoguery that brought Hitler to rule is very similiar to what we’ve seen with Obama. No politician should ever get rock star status, at least in my opinion.

    This admission, “My inner ideologist loves the fact that Obama speaks in a calm, educated way and dares to use words like “hope,” is what concerns me. When a voter, a citizen listens only to the surface of what a political figure says…and I’m sorry, but many Obama supporters have told me they simply like him because he’s a good orator, then they lose sight of the substance behind the words. He could tell you that he’d light your pubic hair on fire, for some, and they’d scream like banshees. It’s idolotry to a certain extent. And with that kind of force behind him, plus the race issues that will forever pervade his presidency and perhaps keep people from vetting him due to concerns for being misconstrued, you play with fire. This nation is in a time of crisis. People are desperate. History has shown us time and again when nations vote with fear and emotion at the core, choices can be made that are disastorous.

    I say this with the proposition Jon that what if you’re wrong. What if he is much more radical than you believed? It’s just a question. With the kind of hysterical support he’s gotten, what would happen if we discovered indeed he had an ulterior motive he didn’t put into that infommerical? That question is why I linked to that article from Time. Not because I’m saying Obama is Hitler, but because the fact that someone was put into power under a similiar guise, nothing is to say it couldn’t happen to us.

    No, Obama won’t come in and do all the socialist stuff you guys keep joking about. No he won’t tell you, HEY I’m a socialist, marxist with anti-zionist feelings with a pro-black, pro-muslim agenda that I will act on under the radar. Why would anyone running for office say that? They wouldn’t. If they wanted power, they’d keep quiet…as much as they could. I challenge you to find any guilt, corrupt politician who went around advertising their intent before their actions were discovered.

    Well, deem it how you will…perceive it however you’d like, but people raising red flags of concern over any politician, no matter if you think it’s “crazy” is what a democracy is all about. I hated Bush with a passion myself, but I sure haven’t just decided to blindly accept someone running for public office at face value, not even McCain, just to escape him. McCain is not my ideal choice, but the alternative is just not an option for me and many other Americans. And that’s fine. As of Tuesday, we’ll have our answer and on the road to either fixing or hurting this nation. The degree of both is very much up in the air unfortunately.

    Anyway, the essay is an interesting read and I could easily highlight portions that I think you should pay attention to for some perspective. But I’ve gotta prepare for the onslaught of anti-conservative, you’re a racist, ignorant, crazy rebuttals coming my way as soon as I hit send. So be it. You gave your opionion. And at the end of this election (thank goondess), I’ve given mine.

    http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html

  • mmc

    Faydean, which part of “Is Obama or the party perfect? No. No candidate is ever perfect” didn’t you understand? Jon has flat out said that, so for you to reply that he thinks those who don’t agree with him are greedy and racist is one of those personal attacks people were talking about with your last set of posts. Really, you don’t know what Jon is thinking any more than we know what you are thinking. Enough already.

  • Le Fiffre

    As I come to believe that Obama is the real thing, I DO begin to hope, and as I do, I also feel a subcurrent of fear that his JFK legacy will end the same way. Were the unspeakable to come about, our republic would be in trouble.

    We’ve watched McCain, who I once admired greatly, herd cattle at his rallies, stirring blind rage and fanning divisiveness with the rhetoric you mention. Those folks will still be around after Nov. 4, and rational thought will gain no more traction over their minds than it has over those Democrats who feel that Hillary was thrown under the bus.

    The Great Depression is not the comparator that concerns me — O. will take office in a nation that has not been so divided since the Civil War (or as Heather might call it, “The War of Northern Aggression.”) The fissures among the electorate are many, and the campaign has only widened them.

    It will take all the hope and inclusiveness, leadership, charm, and persuasiveness Obama can summon just to keep this train on the track. But he’s the best damn thing I’ve seen in a very long time, and I’ll pray to my Mormon God that he’s up to the job — because if he is, we’ll have to make more room on Mt. Rushmore.

    (Didn’t mean to be so long-winded….)

  • Le Fiffre

    @ Faydeen:

    Your take on this happens to be one of the more genuine and rational I’ve heard. So even if I’m putting my money elsewhere, there will be no name calling from me.

    This is for sure — one way or another, we’re all in for a ride.

  • Joanne

    oh my gosh faydean,
    did you really just write 150 paragraphs of nothing? Yes, I believe you did. And my brain is none the better for the time I just wasted reading that guck. if you don’t want BHO to be the president, by all means, vote for someone else. ralph nadar would be a decent alternative. Otherwise, don’t fight the Obama faydean! You know you wanna give in!

  • http://blurbomat.com blurb

    @faydean, Godwin’s Law! Please tell me this is your first time invoking Hitler online.

  • southerngirl

    As Charles Krauthammer said in a column inthe Washington Post:

    “Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a “second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament”…. Obama has…. got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president. ”

    I totally agree, dude.

    It will be so great to have a smart person as president again.

  • southerngirl

    I don’t even bother to read faydean’s comments anymore. She’s too windy and spreads too much crazy.

  • Rich

    @faydean
    I guess what concerns me most about your posting, is that there is no substance to what you have said. You say things like:

    “…has issues…some disturbing issues.”
    Which issues are disturbing?

    “…misgivings about Obama,”
    Great, what are they?

    “No one entire side can be 100 percent correct.”
    Then you have not been paying attention to McCain much.

    “questionable in his judgement and associations,”
    Which judgements? Which associations?

    “But when you piece them together a pattern begins to emerge…a disturbing pattern.”
    What is the pattern? What is disturbing about it?

    “…say something that doesn’t feel like a lie.”
    What part feels like a lie?

    “As my mother would say, there’s some not right…I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s just there. How I could see it and so many others not, I have no clue.”
    I have no clue either, please explain what is not right about him?

    “I’m a new conservative, with years of liberal voting and idealism under my belt. As a former liberal, though I still am very socially liberal, I don’t trust this man as far as I could throw him.”
    No throwing please.

    “Like that infomerical last night. You might have seen it as wonderful and uplifting. Me and many people I know were utterly creeped out by it. It felt like we were living in the Truman Show even having such a thing being done.”
    And you say that because?

    No need for me to go on, I just see a lot of words but no substance, no fact, no example, just words that have nothing backing them up.
    No rock throwing from me, just curious, why nothing to back up all the verbage? ( not a pejorative here )
    Thanks, Rich

  • Becky

    Again, faydean, you assume that Obama voters do no research, explore no further than the surface, accept every statement at face value, are little lambs being led to slaughter. I have never, EVER, voted in a presidential election on the basis of personality. I’m not looking for charisma (although I do understand from presidents like Reagan and Clinton that its presence can go a long way in the world’s perception of the U.S., and I like it when other countries admire us–call me crazy if you must). I’m looking for substance. I didn’t initially support Obama. Once I knew he was going to be the Democratic nominee, I began doing my homework. And I’m very capable of seeking information from more than opinion pieces that tell me only what I want to hear.

    Some of the things you say about Obama are very similar to the things I said about Bush, and time and time again, I’ve been proved right the last eight years. So maybe you’ll be proved right, too. Maybe we’re all the naive idiots you think we are. But even though this country is a huge mess thanks to the thugs who stole the last two elections, we’re still here. We’re limping, but we’re upright. Bush has provided these living generations the proof that even when a man is unfit for the Oval Office, even when his party has a majority in Congress, even when he makes appointments and awards contracts based on cronyism, and even when he puts his choices on the Supreme Court, ONE MAN can’t destory this nation. We are too many, we are too diverse, we have too much access to information, and we are too stubborn to get in lock step behind anyone.

    I have immersed myself in the blogs of Republicans the past two weeks, and never have I seen more evidence of scare tactics. It’s like ghost stories around the campfire. I get less and less information on how McCain and Palin are qualified to fix things than horror stories of what’s to come under the sinister Obama. It reminds me of nothing so much as those religions which, instead of teaching how we can best take care of ourselves and each other, simply try to scare us out of hell. BOO!

    You say that half the country will be shut out if Obama wins. You know what? More than half the country was shut out in 2000 and 2004, including me. I have never once, in the last eight years, preceded the name of the person currently in the White House by the word “president” because he isn’t mine and never has been. And yet despite all the scars his administration has left on the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, the economy, and so many other facets of our lives, I still have faith in this country, its people, and its principles.

    Maybe I overestimate the intelligence and goodness of Americans, yet I do see Obama voters as looking for someone who represents the best in us. You don’t see him that way. But don’t assume that those of us who do only can because we’re not putting all the big, scary puzzle pieces together. In my opinion, the real cognitive dissonance has come from McCain. I think he’s better, smarter, and fairer than the man we’ve seen campaigning over the past few months. Had he been true to himself during this entire run toward the White House instead of listening to the Bush/Cheney handlers, I’d be much more willing to vote for him. It confounds me that he would take counsel from the very people who smeared him in 2000, and it especially frustrates me that he’d pander to the religious extremist “base.” Had he been willing to be the moderate conservative that he once seemed to be, he’d have pulled a lot of those undecided voters who ultimately concluded that they distrusted the Unknown Obama a lot less than they distrusted the New McCain.

    Whatever happens on November 4, what all of us as Americans need to do is stop listenng to pundits who fan the flames of divisiveness, anger, and intolerance. We need to return to a more civil discourse and stop assuming those who don’t agree with us are idiots or demons. I’m sure THAT is a lot closer to making me a dreamer than a vote for Obama, but I’m not stupid, and I’m not uninformed, so I do resent being talked to as if I’m a moronic child.

  • http://athornyway.blogspot.com Craig

    @Becky

    Ramen.

  • Elaine in the UK

    Sheesh! When did ‘Socialist’ become a dirty name in the US? It’s beginning to sound like the new ‘Commie’, and the start of McCarthyism all over again!

    As a lifelong ‘European Socialist’, whose only ‘crime’ is to think that it’s the duty of those who ‘have’ to pay enough taxes to ensure there is a safety net for those who ‘have not’, I kind of object to being thought of as a ‘Bogey Man’!

    PLEASE America, for the sake of the world, vote Obama! Believe me, here in the UK we have got everything crossed for him!

  • dross

    I understand the pride many of you will feel if Obama is elected. He is without a doubt an extremely impressive man. Shocking though this may be to some, I’m an admirer of Malcolm X. Don’t get me wrong, I despise the ugly racism of his earlier years, but the changes he was making before he was killed lead me to imagine what he might have become. I admired how he turned his life around, and his intelligence. I admired his amazing charisma, his ability to communicate, and his ability to get straight to the core of a point.

    In some ways, I see Obama as what a Malcolm X might have been had he been born in a different time.

    Here’s the real shocker: If Obama is elected I will feel proud of my country for electing him. To me, the election will represent the effective death of racism in the U.S. Before you start screaming about that, read further. Of course, racism is never likely to be stamped out. There’s a dark side the human soul that must be civilized out of us. Little boys want to pull the wings off butterflies, and groups of children will always tend to torment whoever is different. We have to civilize those things out of them. Individual acts and feelings of racism will always exist in some hearts. But with the election of Obama, a milestone is reached and a gate closes behind us.

    That said, I hope will all my heart that Obama won’t be elected. Why? I’m not in a fighting mood this morning, so I’m going to appeal. No, I’m going to beg. I sincerely beg everyone reading this to read what I’m going to write. Not to convince you, because I know I won’t. Just as an appeal from one human to others.

    I’m voting against Obama because I truly, sincerely believe that his policies will lead us in the wrong direction. I don’t dislike him because he’s black, I don’t dislike him because of any ads anyone has put out, I don’t dislike him because Rush Limbaugh, or Shawn Hannity, or anyone else dislikes him. I don’t dislike him at all. I simply disagree completely with his policies.

    Most of you reading this feel differently. I respect that. Do I think you’re wrong? Absolutely. Do I think you’re stupid? No. We’re all looking at basically the same set of information and coming up with different answers.

    I was once on the left. I changed my views. Not on everything, but I was mainly on the left because I thought that it was the side of freedom. I’ve come to feel differently. I don’t like much of the Republican platform, nor do I like many of the positions Republicans are forced to take to win the nomination. I reluctantly vote Republican because with a careful weighing, I think they’re the lesser of two evils.

    With the exception of a few tricky issues, most of what both parties and all of us here argue aobut is this: What is the proper role of government? It’s really an intellectual discussion. You on the left think the right uses unfair and deceptive tactics and is willing to steal an election. We on the right think the same. We both have plenty of evidence. I can point to lots of things I find outrageous in the Clinton administration, and you can point to the same in the Bush administration. There’s no evil or stupid going on amongst us regular folks. We just disagree.

    I don’t really have a stunning conclusion to this long post, I just had some things I wanted to say. Mainly I feel sad. I want so much to have a discussion about what our government should and shouldn’t do, without an underlying current of “the other side is evil.”

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