I'm going to pony up and make another donation to the Obama campaign this evening. It will be small (I'm not exactly awash in cash), but it will matter. I am going to chip in again because I want a small slice of ownership in our future. Senator Obama opted out of the public finance system because he had faith in us. Well, I still have faith in him.
And in all of us. Please read on...
We're mad as hell. We should be. He isn't behaving like one of us. He's moving to the center. Some say he's moving to the right (which is a bit obvious, as the center is to the right of the left, duh). He's selling out our principles, some cry. He isn't going to do everything we want in the way that we want it.
Guess what? You're gonna get more of the same. Guess what else? That's as good as it gets. America is bigger than the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Our hopes and dreams, our policy goals and our outright demands, well they aren't the sum total of the American body politic. We are a part of it. I happen to think we're the most enlightened part of it, but we aren't the whole of it.
We aren't always going to get what we want. There are things that Senator Obama is doing right now that we will regret for as long as we live. You, or I, or any other of our kind will get to say in 2020 that we knew it would be a mistake to capitulate on the telecom immunity. Of course this is so.
But so what? Name any President in our history who did everything his base wanted him to do in the way that they wanted him to do it. You can't. That person does not exist.
Barack Obama will be a progressive President in many ways. He will be a centrist in others. He may even be conservative in one or two. He will be, as he already is, a bit of a mix. I think its fair to say we're all, each of us, a bit of a mix.
I'll chip in because I won't let the perfect ideal (someone like Russ Feingold) be the enemy of the positive good (like Barack Obama). Barack Obama will accomplish much of what we want. Certainly, he'll accomplish far more of our goals than did President Bush or a hypothetical President McCain.
Accept the fact that life is full of compromises, and no small number of shitty ones. How shitty a compromise Barack Obama may be to you, I have to hope he's light years better than your alternatives. I love this country and I want it to prosper. We cannot afford four more years of this. We just can't. I do believe that John McCain would make a better President than George W. Bush, but frankly that's a bit like saying he'd be better than getting shot in the face. It's a low bar.
Your inaction will only hobble us. Your lack of ardor will only serve to help Senator McCain somehow win the prize his party has done nearly everything it could possibly do to lose.
Please, match my ten bucks. It's a tiny donation. It's nothing, really. It's a trifle. I doubt I've given much more than $100 up to this point. I give in small dribs and smaller drabs. It's what I can do.
Please, do what you can do. I've never solicited donations for a candidate before. Folks, we need to win this, and we need to broaden our horizons. We should beat up on Barack Obama when he earns it, but we can't beat up on ourselves.
[Update]
FYI, this is actually what I expected of Barack Obama, and what I wanted from him. I'm not really crestfallen, but I see that many of you folks are.
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