Unstoppable Obama

[The River]

Unstoppable Obama
by Barbara Ehrenreich

"When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called CSPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama.

In the dominant campaign narrative, his appeal is mysterious and irrational: he’s a “rock star,” all flash and no substance, tending dangerously, according to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, to a “cult of personality.” At best, he’s seen as another vague Reaganesque avatar to Hallmarkian sentiments like optimism and hope. While Clinton, the designated valedictorian, reaches out for the ego and super-ego, he supposedly goes for the id. She might as well be promoting choral singing in the face of Beatlemania.

snip

Clinton can put forth all the policy proposals she likes–and many of them are admirable ones–but anyone can see that she’s of the same generation and even one of the same families that got us into this checkmate situation in the first place. True, some people miss Bill, although the nostalgia was severely undercut by his anti-Obama rhetoric in South Carolina, or maybe they just miss the Internet bubble he happened to preside over. But even more people find dynastic successions distasteful, especially when it’s a dynasty that produced so little by way of concrete improvements in our lives. Whatever she does, the semiotics of her campaign boils down to two words–”same old.”

Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An antiwar black President with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!"


Read it all at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/15/7086/

As an Edwards supporter, I'm leaning heavily towards Obama.

[Hepburn]

1. I supported Edwards....and I am pretty much for Obama now.

I do fully admit, however, I have detested Hillary Clinton for years, so that is a very large part of the reason why I am now supporting Obama.

:hi: