It's Sunday morning before the election. We just gained an extra hour of campaign time--and an hour, as big media insists on telling me, can make or break the election. But as I see, from this round little table in this caffeine hub, the election is already made (and broken, for that matter). If you haven't witnessed what's shaping up on the streets and in the hearts and minds of the populous, if it's not apparent to you yet, the shift is on.
This morning, whether resulting from the coffee or the cleansing rain--or both--the best examples of the shift became apparent. Here's a lackadaisical compilation.
1. Buttons. Buttons! In this fashionista-driven, uber style conscious society, who'd have thought the political button would make a comeback? But they're everywhere, and they're all Obama/Biden aluminium. They make yard signs and bumper stickers look like prehistorical relics. The energy of this campaign has made politics hip again.
2. Political Know-How. For the first time in a long time, political awareness isn't funneled through old and white and seasoned. It isn't about being told what's at stake and choosing between one or the other. This time around it's about being cognizant of the people and what we need out of them. My favorite part about the Obama/Biden ticket is the way it satisfies the needs of expansive democratic base while clearing room for dissatisfaction. People can support the candidate and simultaneously lodge complaints about what they feel still needs to be done. That's what hope does. It doesn't say, "Sacrifice your core beliefs this time around." It says, "I'll offer time to make room for that." I don't find that everyone's absolutely in love with every last word or policy the candidates are offering. I get the impression that we know perfection isn't possible. But I feel like everyone understands the stakes and how charisma and a brain give hope there will always be room to work on those differences.
3. The Self. More importantly, the role of the self. This is actually the reason I decided to make time to blog today. I heard a young man behind me in line professing to a friend that he met an Obama employee in Florida, got his number, and was hoping to find work there in some capacity soon. While he framed his anecdote in the familiar I'm-sought-after-because-I'm-qualified tone, I started thinking about what lies at the core of such a story. What I found was Obama's community organizer spirit and the drive and direction of the country when he enters office. This employee mentioned is a product of an organizer and his belief that through networking and service, every man, woman, and child can make a difference. While I don't doubt the qualifications of the man in line--he might very well be a political juggernaut--I know that same phone number was cast out like a net into the sea. It's realization of the Obama philosophy that everyone is qualified.
I'll be 26 in January. I recently realized this means that I've had a Bush at the helm for 16 years of my life. Sixteen years of a philosophy that not everyone is qualified; that some must decide for all. How can our elders wonder why the youth is so energized about Obama?
Here's how. I'm from a long line of conservative republicans; small-towners who want limited government and less taxes. Such political beliefs are sensible, but they're no longer what constitute being a republican. Republican policies have shifted into specified scare-tactics, a binary us/them mentality that situates every change as a threat. They claim that arguments for global warming threaten our economy of driving and producing (rendering public transit socialism and carbon emission caps as a clamp on free markets); gun control infringes on the God-given right to make food of an animal (and no guns means you're defenseless against pickpockets and terrorists); gay marriage jeopardizes the family (although we shattered that porcelain long ago). Keep running your own list. If you're republican, what aren't you afraid of?
The most puzzling thing is how those who argue for small government can claim to be republican when this is the administration that passed the Patriot Act. That's the biggest, scariest, most involved monster ever created.
Change is unstoppable, real, and constant. But what's left to complain about? Politics is again hip for the masses. Young voters are motivated. Voter turnout will shatter records. A majority of Americans do not want to fight in misbegotten wars. Common citizens are donating their money and their time for a unified cause. A man with a black father and a white mother is running for president. Never before has America looked more American.
