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We Democrats are getting close to having a nominee for President. I made no secret of my vigorous support for John Edwards’ candidacy. I wrote several articles in the past attacking his rivals for the nomination, including Obama. In the last few weeks, I’ve reached out to members of some of those rivals’ campaigns. I realized after Iowa that there was a chance Edwards would not win the nomination and if he dropped out, I wanted to be well informed about both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama so I would know who I wanted to support in a post-Edwards race. In an intellectual exercise, I cleared my mind of all past knowledge of what I knew about either Hillary or Obama and I researched their accomplishments, their speeches and tried to find out who they were as people. It’s a challenging thing to try to start from scratch about things or people you know so much about. I imagine that renowned Zoologist Desmond Morris, who wrote “The Naked Ape” had similar difficulties ignoring what he knew about human beings and writing about them from the perspective of a Zoologist cataloguing and examining a never before seen species. A few things stand out about Barack Obama. First, his whole life has been about diversity. Born to a Kenyan father and a white American mother, he looks like the picture of diversity. His mother and father divorced when he was two and then Barack later had an Indonesian stepfather with whom he and his mother moved to Indonesia. Wikipedia’s entry on Obama quotes him at an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show when he said
In an America where many Republicans seem determined to divide us on issues like race, religion and immigration status, Obama’s candidacy and Presidency would be like a miracle cure. That isn’t to say that I think that such issues would magically disappear overnight in an Obama Presidency, but he could speak to and deal with such issues from a perspective and with the authority that few others could and as a result would be a nearly irresistible force for positive change. Hillary Clinton not only cannot offer this, the way she has conducted her campaign over the last six weeks has been like putting salt in the wounds of America’s ethnic divisions. Second, despite having a very progressive voting record, Obama has made a point of reaching out to and dialoguing with Republicans and the religious right. At the same time, he hasn’t shrunk from challenging Republican groups to be less divisive. According to Wikipedia: In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier. He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" to show "there is no shame in going for an HIV test."… Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged "so-called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all too eager to exploit what divides us." This example is just one of many times where Obama reached out to the right without sacrificing his principles. Again, Hillary Clinton does not have this capacity to reach out to Republicans and speak the truth to them and have it come across in positive way. Even if she suddenly developed the ability to do this overnight, it would no longer matter. She and her husband have such a reservoir of ill-will with the ideological right in this country that it would not matter how much and in what way she reached out, the country would remain starkly divided under a Hillary Clinton Presidency, if she somehow managed to get that far, which I doubt. Third, an impressive aspect of Barack Obama has been his unwavering commitment to peace and diplomacy. As an Edwards supporter, I used to hate it when Obama supporters would remind me that he made the right choice on the Iraq war resolution. I hated it because you cannot deny that he had the foresight few others had at the time that the Bush administration viewed the passage of the resolution as a blank check to go to war. About this, Obama has said:
Some other highlights about Obama’s opposition to the war: Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war and has a horrific record of voting to continue to support and fund it at nearly every opportunity. During the campaign, she has been the least decisive on ending the war and bringing home the troops making me doubt if she really intends to do either in the first years of her Presidency. Finally, Obama has a legislative record of fighting for middle and lower income families. He fought during his tenure in the Illinois State Senate to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education. From his website, here are some of Obama’s proposals on poverty and job creation:
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people: Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers Steven Leser specializes in Politics, Science & Health, and Entertainment topics. He has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations. Steven Leser writes for www.opednews.com, an internet only media site that has grown to become one of the highest traffic news sites in America, reaching more traffic, according to alexa.com, than all but the thirty largest daily newspapers in the US. Mr. Leser is one of the 500+ liberal pundits who, each month, are published in what has become one of the top five Liberal/progressive media sites in the US.
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