Probama

Well since all the newspapers are publishing their presidential endorsements this weekend, I might as well do mine since I'm way more influential than that tired old Washington Post: Vote for Barack Obama. Oh, and you can just save your dissenting opinion - while America is a democracy, my blog most assuredly is not and I'll just delete any comments I don't agree with...it's my Bush-iest quality. I told you everything would be different after the Revolution!



I've had this Obama sticker on my car for almost eighteen months...EIGHTEEN MONTHS! I've had it on there so long I had to buy it from Cafe Press; there weren't any Obama stickers way back then! That seems so crazy now, to think back about who seemed the more likely candidate at different times: Edwards (remember him?), Hillary, hmmm, whoever those other people were. Early on - beyond the eighteen months - I was a devoted Hillary supporter but even then I thought Obama's rightness was truly the better choice, even if it meant the party's eventual Election Day loss. So I switched allegiances and for once, I might have backed the right horse!

Over the months since, I've endured a little bit of heckling - one guy stood by my car in a parking lot and waited for me to come out of a shop just so he could call me a "nigger-lover." Another time, a woman in a car flagged me down at a red-light to tell me Barack Obama was going to drive America to ruin. That'd be a short trip, I thought, considering the ruins the current administration's left it in. But instead I said "why don't you just fuck off?" because that's just the type of guy I am. I know what you're thinking: this sort of abuse practically makes me the Rosa Parks of 40+ white guys...and I completely agree.

I early voted today. I pressed the Obama button with pride and glee, thrilled that for once I wasn't voting for the lesser of two evils - I was voting for a truly great candidate, one with vision, principles and a wife who can still move her face. A candidate who still believes there's such a thing as social justice and economic fairness and a woman's right to choose what happens in her own womb. A candidate who doesn't rely on Joe the Plumber horse-shit to make his point because he can make his point without using manufactured metaphors. I live in Tennessee and I harbor no illusions about the Volunteer State turning blue anytime soon. But there were long lines and more African-Americans than I've ever noticed before. So who knows what that means. But I'm hopeful that it signals an end to this brutal, ignorant, scare-tactic era run by a murderous, venal, dishonest handful of money-grubbers and that I can once again live in a country I'm proud of rather than one I'm too poor to move away from.



Don't be a dick: Vote Obama.