Reply #7: Obama didn't have money until January [View All]

[Recursion]

Basically, Obama gave the lie to the claim that you absolutely must have money at the beginning to win anymore. Now, as a former Deaniac I can tell you this was the same insurgency Dean ran but he just did every part of it better, and the technology was better-placed (YouTube has done more for our party in the past 3 years than any 10 political consultants combined).

Frankly I don't want excuses from Clinton: I believed in her for a long time. I believed she was Bill's better angels: she would run the campaign and the administration Bill should have run 16 years ago. Frankly, all appearances point to the opposite. I don't care about excuses: she should have fought. She should have fought somewhere, anywhere between Super Tuesday and Ohio. Wisconsin would have been a good choice. She could have won, even with little money. Just get her out there, break her free from the campaign consultants, and let her be herself. Christ, the times that she's done that she's made me want to vote for her, and I'm as dyed-in-the-wool an Obamite as they come, these days. She should have fought, and she didn't. Same problem Kerry had.

Obama won my vote the same way Dean did: he asked me for it, and he asked me to work for him. Why did I volunteer to canvass for Obama? Because someone asked me to. I didn't really know much about him. I was an Edwards guy (well, at first I was a Richardson guy). Someone said, "do you want to come to South Boston and canvass for Senator Obama?" That one person convinced me to do it, and ever since then I've been more and more convinced that this is my candidate. He's not afraid to ask me to do stuff for him. That's crucial.

I was a US Marine. I carried a very large, heavy machine gun from point A to point B and made sure that nobody who had the intent of killing our guys and girls could get past the line between point A and point B. One of the lifelong advantages of having been a US Marine is the knowledge that you could prevent someone from crossing that line between A and B. That may seem meaningless to non-veterans, but it's a very powerful point. But how does this relate? It relates because I'm a fairly average American. I enlisted in 1997. My country had no compelling crisis, but I enlisted because I believed in service. I was sickened that after 9/11 Bush didn't ask us, just go on TV and ask us, to serve like that.

We're hungry, a lot of us. We're hungry not for gain or fame or benefits but for the chance to do something for this country. Nobody on any side of the aisle is asking us to do anything except Obama. Not even McCain. And here I'll admit something: in 2000 I voted in the GOP primary for McCain not to screw with the GOP election but because of the extent to which I admired that man and his service to our country. And I still consider him a great American. But even he, who gave so much, has not managed to realize that we are ready for a leader who will ask us to do great things. We can work. We can struggle. We can sacrifice. We can do what Columbia will ask if only our leaders will have the courage to ask it of us.

Anyways, this rant has gone on long enough. I hope you all are well.

Dmesg approves this message.