The Young Turks

My friend Kev (female) had just swiped my new Obama yard sign from the back of my truck, which also had an Obama bumper sticker on it.  We told him we were both definitely voting for Obama, and her husband said he was too, and then he asked us how to pronounce his first name--"is it Bare-ack?"   Wow, this guy was seriously uninformed!  He was a nice guy in his mid- to late-40s, with a son about nine?  While we played with his puppy, he continued to ask us what we thought about Obama.  We asked who he was voting for and he said the following:

"I'm not voting for either one yet.  I don't really know enough about Obama. "I know the country isn't going in the right direction, and I want change, but I'm a little afraid of too much change, in case things get worse." 

I told him why I was supporting Obama.  I have followed his career since before he was a senator, and I believe that he is on the whole a very intelligent man, who has stayed fairly true to his political path, with perhaps the normal mild pandering to special interests in his state while being senator.  I said he has fairly moderate views in terms of liberal vs conservative, and is even too conservative for many democrats in some respects (I wanted Edwards, and there goes the idealistic youth vote!).  But I respect Obama and to me there is really no contest.  Today's McCain is not the McCain of years past, but a tool of the republican party that has changed his position to match every mandate of the conservative christian right since getting the nomination.  (I really think it was an unexpected win on his part and he's not up to the task.)  I just have lost a lot of respect for the man in this campaign, sadly.  Perhaps he will go back to being a decent senator after all this.

He wanted to know what we thought about Rezco, and my friend and I said we thought that had mostly been cleared up.  Then he asked "Why does the media call him an 'African-American' if he is half white?  He's a mulatto, right?" I said that I thought 'mulatto' probably sounded a little too much like a slur, as if trying too hard to label a person by race. Clearly, this man would rather be voting for someone that was at least half white.  My friend Kev told him she thought he was a pretty normal guy no matter what color he was--sort of a humanist christian egghead nerd, yet a shrewd and smart politician.

In the end, I told him that he should make up his mind when the candidates select their VPs, because I felt confidant that Obama would have the better partner--whether Hillary, Chris Dodd, Wes Clark, or some other very experienced and well-respected person, likely with military or foreign policy cred of some sort, and that McCain was probably going to have to pick someone like Romney--another unexciting loser of the panderbear mold.  

Basically, it comes down to the fact that if we want our vote to count in this election, we have to choose between these two men.  Although I don't agree with Obama on everything, I never really expected I would, and this presidential vote will still be the easiest in my 30 years of voting.  This guy just needed a little reassurance that Barack wasn't a Black Panther, because deep down, he hated what the republicans had done to our great country. 

I don't notice the Republicans infighting like the dems, and we need to be aware that this perception of a united front has been effective in the past at winning elections.  Let's not lose this one kids.  Keep some perspective.