Pamela Jean Owens off-line

Wow!  Was this a night, and a week, or what?  I have so many random thoughts, that they are just wanting to come pouring out.  So here they come:

On the juxtaposition of Bill Clinton and Barack:  single moms trying to raise brilliant sons while working and getting their own education, kids who went to college on scholarships and student loans, just like me and most of you.  Which sounds more like the story suiting a president?  That one, or two multimillionaire who are son and grandson of a multimillionaire who contibuted money to Hitler’s party while America and Britain were preparing for war and France was being invaded?

On the housing crisis as seen by Obama, Biden, and McCain.  Biden takes the train back to Deleware every night, doesn’t even have a second house in D.C., and never has.  Barack and Michelle only paid off their student loans and bought a large, but not gigantic, home in Kenwood on the south side of Chicago after his book hit the best seller list.  McCain owns seven homes, or maybe it’s five, he can’t quite remember where they all are.

On pain:  prisoner of war, decorated and welcomed home with banners, or single dad whose young wife and daughter died in a car wreck on the eve of what should have been the young family’s happiest day.  Hard choice, but either one is more than enough, and neither is qualification for being president.  Survival isn’t enough.  We need to do more than just survive.

Barack and Michelle were our NEIGHBORS in Hyde Park.  They were just plain Hyde Park activists like we were.  His first political race was actually a couple of years before State Senate:  first he ran and was elected to the Local School Council, and his opponent?  My husband Rick!  They shared that stage at the candidate forum.  And when he was campaigning for State Senate, and when he was campaigning (unwisely) against our great First District Congressman, former Black Panther Party Education Chairman Bobby Rush, one of the senior members of the House Education committee, Barack came to speak at the progressive political organizations at University of Chicago that our daughter was a member of, and at the little Haymarket Housing Co-op where Rick and John lived for the year I was teaching and living by myself in Ohio.  He cared enough about 12 progressives, aged 12 to 54, to come for dinner there and talk about his campaign.  That was just 8 years ago last spring.  This is a REAL person, not far away from any one of us, except the super rich, and those he knows well enough to work with.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both support Barack.  So he can hardly be seen as a threat to the unselfish wealthy.  And, frankly, I want him to be a threat to the selfish ones who have been coddled by the Bushes, especially the Shrub Jr. one.  The rest of us have been threatened enough financially to last several lifetimes, and so has the U.S. economy.

Why don’t the commentators know how those common folks who spoke ahead of Barack got there?  They must not be plugged into the netroots, shame on them! You know, of course, because you are reading a blog that isn’t a very big one.  Anyone who contributed $5 at a certain opportunity was entered into a sort of a drawing to pick 10 people to be backstage with Barack tonight.  I guess they picked the most eloquent of the 10 to speak.  But they were all there, and their profiles are all on the Obama campaign website.  They have wonderful, typical, AMERICAN stories.

For any of my newer friends who have doubts, I truly welcome open dialogue between now and November.  I respect McCain, and I truly think we would be much safer and much better off if the Republicans had selected him in 2000 instead of G.W.Bush.  But he is not that McCain.  Karl Rove is running this McCain, not John McCain.  All he offers is Bush 3, and only a small percentage of Americans actually want that.  Don’t be fooled into thinking you have the chance to vote for the John McCain of 2000 or the John McCain of the primary season:  he’s long gone.  But he doesn’t want you to notice.  I think you are smart enough to notice.  I hope so.

That’s it — not very connected or coherent — but real.  Michelle is just a woman, not someone who ever expected to be famous.  Chelsea has offered to help the Obama girls know how to be in the spotlight, from the point of view of a girl who was where they were and remembers it well.  Isn’t it time for a president who represents the best of us, not just the wealthiest of us?  Yes, it is, and yes, we can!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 11:51 pm and is filed under My Story, Political Musings, This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.