Politics, it's not pretty

A friend emailed me a column and asked for my thoughts. You can read the article by following the link. My take on the column follows:

Would You Like Change With That? - Doug Henwood

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Obama.html

To say I was not impressed with this piece would be a bit of an understatement. I will say up front that I support Obama in the Democratic primary so you can take my opinion with a gain of salt if you like. And I will admit that I think the very title of the column, Would You Like Change With That? An Analysis of Obamamania, did little to contribute to any expectation of a balanced piece. If you support Obama you are indulging in some kind of mania? I don’t think so!

Henwood’s first charge is that Obama is inspiring. So at least we can agree on one point. He then goes on to the oft repeated claim that Obama’s inspirational rhetoric are empty promises and basically meaningless. He looks to Obama’s voting record to try and demonstrate this. But anyone who has been paying the least attention to this race knows that the differences between Clinton and Obama on issues of policy are minuet.

Clinton and Obama both have voting records and it is hard to find all that much difference based on how they voted on various issues. And most people who actually look at a candidates voting record should understand that any given vote may or may not reflect the candidates support or opposition to the issue supposedly being voted on. Without knowing what amendments were added to bill, whose support would be lost on a bigger issue and myriad other things that make up the bigger political picture a vote on a single issue is easy to misrepresent.

So the only way to judge a candidate is by their overall voting record and policy positions, not by any one vote. Based on their overall records I could and will happily vote for either Clinton or Obama, whoever wins the primary.

What Henwood seems to miss is that I will be voting in the Kentucky primary for Obama precisely because he takes nearly the same positions as Clinton on issues important to me but that he also has the added ability to inspire me and so many others. Inspiration may be the deciding factor in this election and its importance, in my opinion, is tremendous. Remember George the Senior deriding, “that inspiration thing?”

This single item that I find most disturbing in this column is having a middle 50s white man suggesting that somehow Obama’s racial politics are suspect. Hey, Henwood, you are of the wrong generation and are the wrong color for this, it’s obviously way over your head!

As a 57 year old gay white man, I can demonstrate even if I am not able to articulate it terribly well. I live in a society where homophobia is pervasive and have endured hetrosexism since I was old enough to understand that I was “different.” While intellectually I know progress has been made over the last 40 years, homophobia still exists everywhere. From my perspective it still feels like it did in the 60s when I was a teenager.

My son, born of an early marriage before I came out, is 30 years old and is also gay. The world he lives in and his perception of it is totally different than mine. He expects that he will be able to marry some day, he expects to be accepted at work and in the community, he expects that he will be treated fairly even in a world he knows is homophobic. His is the new generation we can look to with hope and pride precisely because they understand that we are changing, even if too slowly, as a people and a nation.

We need Obama to inspire a new generation of voters. We need Obama to provide a younger generation’s perspective on our world and how its leaders should approach issues that my generation has failed to overcome.

What we don’t need are people on the left like Henwood attacking our greatest hope.