“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

A few thoughts.

Most of the people I associate with have serious critiques of the electoral system and recognize its limitations. Despite that, I’ve encountered many friends and comrades who are excited about Barack Obama. It started a few months ago, when I was on a hike with a few friends right after the “Race Speech.” Granted, there was a lot of stuff in there that was really good–-it’s pretty much unheard of for any policymaker to talk about race in such a frank way, about things like discrimination and lack of economic opportunity. He acknowledges the anger that exists in black and white communities. He also lauds protest and civil disobedience (in the context of the civil rights movement), right in the beginning of the speech. Despite this, the speech is far from perfect and it has a lot of problems, including comments like this, where he’s denouncing Rev. Wright’s sermons as: “a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.” There are lots of people talking about how much they like him. Though not the most radical of sources, here’s an essay of Tom Hayden’s where he talks about why he is campaigning for Obama, and The Nation has come out strongly supporting him.

I remember when people were excited about John Kerry. In 2004 I lived in Ohio, a swing state, and I remember going to the poll the morning of the election and seeing lines of my friends as they prepared to vote, believing that Kerry would win. I voted because at the time I was working at Planned Parenthood, and I believed that who was in office would influence policies that control funding for family planning and restrictions on abortions. I didn’t have any illusions that voting him into office would be some transformative experience, though I thought that it might make a minor difference to a select group of people.

That’s not how people are talking about Obama. People, even radicals who have checked out of the system, some who vote and some who don’t, believe in his message of change. So, over the last few months, I’ve been asking a lot of people I’ve come into contact with about why he is exciting. It boils down to a few points:

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