For me it was simple. Think about what you believe, what your core values are. Visualize your “if I were the President, I’d…” scenario. What are your core issues, and if you could just wave a wand and say, “these are the laws now”, what would this country look like. Or more directly, if you were to pick someone to run the country, regardless of whether s/he could actually do it or not, what would you want that person’s ideology to be?
I’ve always thought in very broad terms about two things:
1 – This country has a lot of problems that no one is addressing, and
2 – In 2008, I would for the first time be old enough to run for President.
It’s an interesting fantasy world I allowed myself to live in. Intellectually I dream of what I would do as President. But I also know that practically speaking, I could never be President, nor would I want that kind of responsibility. I often have thought that no one who really deserves the job would want it. But nonetheless, I had ideals…I had a vision of what I would say to America were I ever to run for President. I guess you could call it a “hypothetical platform”.
That platform I dream of is very close to the Democratic Party platform, but in several areas, particularly areas of socio-economic justice, I have felt that the Democrats were no better than the Republicans. For example, though Democrats do more to build a strong middle class (in my opinion) than Republicans, they still allow business concerns to trump the needs of the common man far too often. On other issues they perhaps go too far…the death penalty for example…Dems would like to do away with it, and I tend to think for some crimes it’s not about rehabilitation or punishment, it’s about removing a dangerous fucking individual from society so they can’t hurt anyone else.
And though it can at times be nuanced (and others blatant), I had yet to encounter a Presidential candidate who spoke TO my beliefs. Politicians always seem to get bogged down in a couple of hot button issues and everything else falls by the wayside. Then four years ago, I first heard Barack Obama speak.
It was not about color, it was about that nuanced approach. When he said that he realized that people don’t expect government to solve all of their problems, but that they do sense that with a slight change in our priorities, we can do much better, THAT was absolutely the key for me. And when he went on to say that we have gay friends in the red states and friends who coach little league in the blue states, and that we are not a collection of red states and blue states, but one United States of America, that was incredibly powerful to me.
I’ve felt that what we’ve been doing with Presidential and national level politics is building coalitions of various niches and then pitting these coalitions against each other in an us vs. them mentality, and that has not been solving our problems as a nation. I’ve felt most of my adult life that we’re getting further and further away from lifting up our society as we become more bitterly divided.
What was so powerful to me about Obama’s words that it acknowledged a middle ground that I feared was lost forever. I think it’s only logical to acknowledge that though we may be the land of opportunity where theoretically anyone can make it, some people start on a different level of the economic ladder, and often where you end depends quite a bit on where you start. In other words, I think anyone who really believes that every child born is born onto a level playing field is seriously dilluted, but that is symptomatic of the problem when you look at the right wing of American politics.
The right has been fed the land of opportunity story, and those who either haven’t encountered financial hardship, or who have but have seen themselves through it, have no empathy for why it might not be similarly possible for someone in a different set of circumstances to lift one’s self up. But the left is not blameless…too often Democratic policies have been akin to throwing money at a problem in hopes that it will go away, and worrying about “fairness” of distribution, which really does nothing to actually level that playing field, and which leads to abuses of the system. It boils down to, some people need a hand up, but too often the left has wanted to give a hand out, and that has allowed the right to steer the conversation to the area where now anyone who needs a little help is seen as lazy, and people think that everyone relying on a little help is just sucking off the government teat. The right has intentionally built resentment among hard working people who don’t see that it’s fair that someone who doesn’t work should be afforded the same things they get when they work hard for their money. The problem is and has always been that the answer is in the middle.
And this is what makes Obama’s speech so powerful. He acknowledges that hey, people aren’t just looking to the government to solve all their problems for them (that’s the big lie), but they do sometimes have to look for help, which is why we can do much better. It is my belief that being as wealthy and expansive of a nation as we are, there is no reason for anyone to lack a subsistance living, adequate health care, quality education, and income security when they are no longer able to work due to advanced age or disability. These are the precepts of the social safety net that FDR put into place over 70 years ago, and which Republicans ever since have been trying to chip away at piece by piece, using the mantra of “personal responsibility” and “ownership society”.
When I was a kid, if I got sick, I went to the doctor. My parents and everyone they knew had pension plans through their work. We could get eyeglasses and dental care. My parents worked, the income put food on the table and the benefits kept us secure. But companies did away with pensions in favor of 401(k)‘s. Health Insurance was moved into the realm of Health Maintenance Organizations which were supposed to control costs, but which saw costs skyrocket year after year until first benefits had to be cut to make it affordable to the company and employees. Dental and vision were peeled off and became separate benefits which now most employers don’t even offer. Yet insurance companies are quite profitable, as are medical providers. Health care has gone in my lifetime from being something everyone took for granted, to being a luxury.
And that hasn’t been enough, Republicans have wanted to privatize our Social Security, so that savvy investors can profit from the losses of the regular Joe. And health care is just one area where we’ve been sold on this idea of taking “personal responsibility” for one thing after another, and now that we’ve taken this responsibility on, we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that there are those who can not do so…not because they don’t work as many hours or as hard as everyone who can afford these things, but because we’ve privatized everything, deregulated everything and become a completely free market society where it’s every man for himself. This is nothing short of Social Darwinism, economic survival of the fittest.
And so even though we had 8 years of Clinton, he was very conservative in what he managed to do. He certainly did not change us from a top down/trickle down/supply side economy back to a pay as you go, growing prosperity from the bottom up economy. Which is where Obama sits ideologically speaking. And that speech 4 years ago was the first sign of it.
But then in February of 2007 when he announced his candidacy, I was ready to support him. But I wanted to know who ALL the candidates were, and that included Democrats and Republicans. I studied their views, I read some of the books they’d published, and I came to the conclusion that in about 98% of all cases, ideologically speaking, Obama was saying the exact same things I’d always envisioned myself saying in my hypothetical 2008 run for the Presidency. I have rarely encountered a position of his with which I did not completely agree, and those which I did not agree on, I have ALWAYS been able to understand his point of view.
For me, it was a no brainer. I said nearly 2 years ago that if Obama ran, I believed not only could he win, but that he would win. I believed it would be harder for him to defeat Hillary than it would to defeat any of the Republicans. I was right. Nothing surprised me here, because I’ve kind of felt that inside, in that area that exists sort of intrinsically inside of most people that defines their moral compass, their set of what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that the policies that Obama espouses, and the genuineness with which he imparts his ideas, not to mention the conciliatory nature that he exudes, would be appealing to a broad spectrum of Americans.
In short, I don’t think we lean as far to the right as we think we do. I think we do believe that he health of our society depends on our looking after the people who live within it, which means strengthening, not weakening the social safety net, our infrastructure, and the things that all people need, but none can provide for himself.
Obama’s race, in my opinion was gravy. It’s great to break down a barrier such as this one and I think it will do a great deal to heal some of the relationships that have been strained in our society, and to that effect, I think it’s good for our society to have elected a black President. But as far as I’m concerned, any candidate who said what Obama said, how he said it and conducted his life the way Obama has conducted his life, would have won my vote, even if he/she were purple.
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