I’ve been obsessed with the election. I admit it. I guess that makes me a bad radical. Good revolutionaries (at least in America, for some reason) aren’t supposed to be concerned with elections and the political process (I think leftists in Venezuela, Kenya, and Iran-to name a few-would beg to differ.). But I have been somewhat bitten by the bug. My cynicism is somewhat on hold, and I am trying real hard to show some restraint and not run out and get one of those “Barack The Vote” hoodies I saw for sale. Maybe that’s what’s different here-elections as commodity, politicians as celebrity. But I am joining my homie The Black Snob and am allowing myself to get caught up. Fuck it!
Well, CNN and the Associated Press have just declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the New Hampshire primary. So I guess white people in New Hampshire got in that voting booth and pulled a stunt! Barack is now addressing the audience in NH. He asked them to give Senator Clinton a round of applause-did she do that for him when she lost last week?. He’s dreamy!
It’s interesting because he’s still using the “there’s something happening in America” line. Instead of using it to refer to his historic candidacy, he’s using it to talk about the new dawn of American politics that are about compromise and not about screaming matches. He is calling his voters, and America by extension, “the new majority.”
They clearly love him. They’re chanting O-ba-ma with such fervor! I do have to say it is interesting to see a candidate that inspires so much hope in people.
To my fellow readers, friends, admirers, comrades: I haven’t lost my mind. I don’t agree with everything he says, but hell, I don’t agree with half of what you all say or think half of the time! I am worried about what his role as “Commander in Chief” is going to mean in terms of militarism and policing and prisons and what not. But I do feel inspired by a vision of something less arrogant, less violent,. Can I have that, please? LOL! I feel like I am betraying the $11,000 debt I just racked up for J-school (so I guess I’ve officially given up a conventional career in journalism. The one progressive news outlet I was trying to write for, blew me off, so the hell with it) by publicly supporting a candidate, and betraying my leftist community by being involved in electoral politics, which is a movement faux pas, from what I understand.
He ends his speech with Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.” The pundits on CNN seem to think it was a funny thing, given the fact that he didn’t take the #1 slot (he’s now only 2% points behind with 79% of the vote-not exactly a blowout) Clinton’s speech is good, but she’s not fire like Obama, who seems to be on nothing short of a mission.
Speaking of speeches? Wanna know something about the editor behind Obama’s speeches? Read this Newsweek story.
