(Cross-posted at Silence Isn't Golden)
I've hinted at it for a few months now, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I decided that I would definitely do it. I'd heard stories of previous conventions, and it sounded like something I really wanted to do. In particular, considering how close the primary votes may be, this year's convention could be one for the history books.
But I wasn't sure if it would be feasible. First of all, the dates of the county-level and district-level conventions would require me to make the gruelling Ithaca-to-Nashville trip twice in one month. I just didn't know if I could work it in while also worrying about my grades and my law school applications at the same time.
There's also the fact that I've never had much luck with elections in general. It wasn't until Karl Dean won the Nashville mayoral election this past summer that I had ever been associated with a winner. Between Harold Ford, my friend who ran to be President of the TN College Dems, and my own attempts to get on Student Council in both middle and high school, I had become convinced that I am an election jinx.
But then I said to myself, "Self, I'm already in two law schools, and if I don't get into any others, I'd be thrilled to go to either one of those. Also, I managed to get out of Friday classes this semester, so the trip doesn't have to be so gruelling. And the jinx? That's just a superstition, and besides, I'm less of a dork now than I was in high school (albeit only slightly less)."
The paperwork has all been submitted, and so I would like to officially announce that I, GoldnI, known in the real world as Ilissa Gold, am running to be a delegate from the Tennessee 5th Congressional District to the Democratic National Convention.
But once I made that decision, I had another, equally daunting decision to make--for which canddiate should I declare my support? With the exception of Kucinich and Gravel, I've considered supporting all of the Democratic candidates at one point or another. I supported Bill Richardson early on, and only a month ago I still considered myself officially "undecided," and toyed with the idea of supporting Hillary (at least until she made it clear that she did not want my vote or that of many of my peers)
However, in the back of my head, I always knew which candidate I would end up supporting.
Senator Barack Obama first entered my consciousness at the same time he entered many others', during the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
I remember thinking, "Damn, I like him better than John Kerry! This is what the future of the Democratic Party should look like!"
But it didn't really cross my mind again until July of 2006. That summer, while interning in Washington for Congressman Jim Cooper, they announced that Senator Obama would be giving a lecture just for the Capitol Hill interns. My group of interns decided to go thirty minutes early so that we could get good seats, but the largest auditorium on the Senate side of the Capitol was already standing-room only by the time we got there.
What he said there made a lasting impression on me. It wasn't enough for us students to spend the summer working in the bubble of Washington. If we really wanted to affect political change, we'd have to go home and fight for it there.
Long story short, I went home and discovered how much more personally satisfying it was to work the campaign trail (my election luck aside). I campaigned for Harold Ford, for Karl Dean, and most recently, gone canvassing for Barack Obama.
I discovered something else during that period. Part of the reason why I had gone up to New York for college was to get away from the Bible Belt and to try and find people who were more like me, as I alluded to in my very first blog post. But, as cliche as it sounds, you can never quite escape where you come from. And I've realized in the past four years that it was wrong of me to look at my home state as a hopeless sea of Red with a couple islands of Blue in the middle and the west. It's one big purple mess (that really is true, look at the map). Most folks are just looking for someone who can offer them hope, offer them change, regardless of whether there is a D or an R after that person's name. Senator Obama verbalized this best of all in his 2004 speech:
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
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Let's make one thing perfectly clear though. The politics of hope is NOT about capitulating in the name of "bipartisanship". It is NOT about compromising our progressive ideals for fear of offending someone, somewhere. It is about winning through setting the best example, rather than by having the most damning rhetoric.
It's still difficult for me to verbalize exactly why I support Obama (although I promise I will come up with a way to verbalize it in the next month). Maybe it's because the "politics of hope" speaks to me. Maybe it's because I feel that of all of the Democratic front-runners, he'll do the best job of getting us out of Iraq and rebuilding the image of the U.S. across the world. Maybe it's because of his specific policy proposals, like health care and the economy. Maybe it's simply because, as my Hillary-supporting mother says, that Obama speaks to my generation better than any of the other candidates.
But whatever it is...
...I'm fired up and ready to go.