the cool candidate
I usually avoid writing about politics on my site, in part because I rarely have anything new or insightful to say about our political mil-ooh (though it has happened), and in part because I don’t want some half-baked political rant that I cooked up in twenty minutes to come back and bite me one day. So I’ll keep this short.
The Democralypse has been averted, thank goodness, and Barack Obama has come out on top. I’m glad. As the Democratic contest became more contentious, I was increasingly displeased with Clinton’s hypocritical manipulations and bickering tone, while Obama continually impressed me with his directness and refusal to dumb himself down. I’d much rather have a President who acknowledges the problems of class and race in our country than one who pretends to be “just plain folks” by awkwardly sipping a shot of Crown Royal.
Obama’s victory speech on Tuesday was a powerful, stirring, rock star address. That’s another thing I like about him; he speaks with a kind of force and energy that Clinton, Kerry, and Gore (prior to An Inconvenient Truth, anyway) just never had, and that’s going to give him a huge advantage over McCain. If you want to know what really sold me, though, it happened before the speech. Michelle and Barack Obama, husband and wife, power couple, father and mother, potential President and First Lady, shared a fist pound. A fist pound, people. This wasn’t George Bush dancing with Ricky Martin in some weird attempt to be publicly hip. It was a small gesture between the Obamas (never mind the kajillion other people in the stadium), a “go rock these people, honey” kind of thing. I can’t imagine any other political couple, especially not a prominent pair, doing that. This was way better than watching Al Gore try to consume his wife. The fist pound was simultaneously cool and humanizing. It was an appropriate fist-pounding moment, after all. It made me realize that this guy, this candidate, is someone I can enthusiastically support.
I am absolutely thrilled that Obama is finally, officially the presumptive nominee. I pretty much found Hillary Clinton an unacceptable candidate as soon as people started talking about her running, due primarily to her refusal to admit that her Iraq War vote was a mistake. It seemed very Bush-esque of her. The supposed inevitableness of her candidacy rubbed me the wrong way as well. I had many reasons to dislike Bush in 2000, but among the qualities I found most distasteful about him was his apparent attitude that it was his turn to be President. Of course, Hillary Clinton is not the only Democratic candidate to have that quality in common with him, as it was something that I didn’t care for about Gore and Kerry either. Ultimately, what I’m really happy about is that someone has finally pried control of the party out of the cold, undead hands of the DLC… “New Democrats,” they were called 16 years ago. Much like New Coke was a Coke product that tried to be Pepsi, New Democrats were Democrats that tried to be Republicans. I am so glad that someone finally put Coke Classic back on the shelves.