Once again, Barack Obama supporters are showing that the Obama campaign is really about much more than just electing Barack Obama President of the United States. The campaign is really about promoting a better way of life, founded upon a more positive vision of what it means to be an American.
That vision includes finding a cure for breast cancer. Why? The progressive ideals that fuel support for the Obama campaign include the idea of health care for all people, as well as the more general idea that people in our communities should care for one another.
That’s why in Syracuse, New York, supporters of Barack Obama are using the Obama campaign infrastructure to organize their involvement in the local Race for the Cure - to take place on Saturday, May 17.
For more information, see the events calendar on the Barack Obama campaign site.
Democratic Primary election alert: National Public Radio right wing Republican Rush Limbaugh is encouraging Republican voters to go to the polls tomorrow in Indiana and North Carolina, voting in the Democratic primary - for Hillary Clinton. Consider that, for a minute, that Rush Limbaugh is encouraging support for Hillary Clinton.
My understanding is that if a voter is suspected of being a Republican trying to vote in a Democratic primary, that voter can be challenged, and asked to sign a form affirming that he or she voted for Democrats in the previous election, and votes for Democratic candidates most of the time. If that Republican voter lies, it’s a crime - perjury.
Barack Obama exposed - what is that like? Well, in Wilmington, North Carolina, it looks like humility. The text below is what Barack Obama had to say to a crowd of people there, and it wasn’t about what a great guy he is. Barack Obama talked about his failings, and the temptation to negativity he sometimes feels, and about how the important thing isn’t himself, but all the voters in America, and what they want.
When we started this campaign, I told my campaign team, “We can’t run the same old Washington textbook campaign. We can’t be just poll driven. We can’t be just worried about what the other candidates are saying. We’ve got to try to run a different kind of campaign that gets the American people involved,” and I am proud of the fact that we have succeeded.
But, I won’t lie to you. There are times when we sometimes get sucked into this whole negative thing. People throw an elbow at you, and you start feeling like oh, I’ve got to throw an elbow back. I’ve noticed over the last several weeks, I told this to my team, “We are starting to sound like other folks, starting to run the same negative stuff.”
It shows that none of us are immune from this kind of politics, but the problem is that it doesn’t help you. Having politicians bickering back and forth doesn’t help you. Having them worry about superdelegates doesn’t help you.
This selection is not about me. It’s not about Senator Clinton. It’s not about John McCain. It’s about you. It’s about your struggles, your hopes, your dreams.
Here’s a video of the speech:
Well, okay. So, Barack Obama says that the campaign is about the hopes and dreams and struggles of the people of North Carolina. But what are those struggles?
I’m talking about the silent struggle of a huge number of high school students in North Carolina who participated in the national Day of Silence protest. At one high school alone, 275 students joined in the protest. The numbers were record-breaking.
The Day of Silence was held to show solidarity against students and administrators who bully non-heterosexual students. It’s a shame that some school administrators, in coordinators with some church leaders, responded to the anti-bullying protest with new attempts at bullying of their own.
With the strength of the Day of Silence protests across North Carolina, in spite of massive efforts at intimidation, the Barack Obama campaign ought to take note, and remember that part of the hopes and dreams and struggles of many North Carolinians is just to live as equals, without having their safety endangered by people who cannot tolerate other people having the freedom to choose who they want to have sex with.
In Minneapolis, ObamaWorks volunteers are being called upon to “wear your Obama gear and come help serve the community,” in order to help prepare for and volunteer at the Powderhorn Park May Day Festival (I believe that the parade and festival will actually be on May 5th, not on May 1st).
Obama supporters will be have the chance to help out at art booths, doing stage coordination, or serving as block hosts for the parade. Sure, they will be wearing buttons showing support for Barack Obama for President, but that’s about it for the campaigning. They’ll be working for the parade and only campaigning in as much as they show that Obama supporters are people who are willing to help out their neighbors.
That seems like a very mature, responsible approach for Obama supporters to take.
Unlike traditional presidential campaigns, which just focus on how great the candidate is, the Barack Obama campaign has organized ways to bring out the greatness of the people who support Obama for President. It’s a form of community service campaigning called ObamaWorks.
Through ObamaWorks, people gather to work on projects to improve their neighborhoods. Last weekend in Missoula, Montana, for example, Barack Obama supporters got together to clean up a stretch of the Clark Fork River.
Now, does making the Clark Fork River clean help elect Barack Obama as President? Not directly, but it does show that Barack Obama’s supporters care about a lot more than just electing Obama President. There’s a great deal of idealism among Obama supporters, and yes, that does reflect well upon Barack Obama himself.
Politics aside, good for the ObamaWorks crew in Missoula for helping to keep Montana’s rivers clean.
The ABC News Democratic presidential debate this week was a new low point in a campaign that has exposed once more the profound superficiality of television news organizations. Although the ABC News moderators, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous never could find the time to ask a single question about this week’s astonishing admission from George W. Bush that he now openly admits having known about, and even approved of, a program to administer torture.
Although not a single question dealt with the important and substantial constitutional crisis created by President Bush’s open violation of the law and the Bill of Rights, Charles Gibson did find the time to demand answers from Barack Obama about why he wears flag lapel pins some days, but not every single day all the time.
For almost an entire hour, the Gibson and Stephanopolous refused to ask any questions about any topics that would actually affect the American people, and instead offered question after question about non-policy character attacks. Gibson and Stephanopolous treated the presidential debate like a piece of entertainment news. True to form, ABC/Disney could only look at the 2008 election at the childish level of a cartoon.
In Burbank California from 4:00 until 7:00 this evening, a group of citizens will gather outside the ABC/Disney headquarters at the West Alameda Gate, between South Buena Vista and Keystone Streets. Organized by the Courage Campaign, they will hand out American flag lapel pins to ABC employees as they enter and leave headquarters, in protest of the shameful disservice done to American voters by the ABC News team behind this week’s presidential debate.
In the glossy word of TV Land Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous live in, all it takes to be patriotic is to put a little pin in your jacket. Here in the real America, we citizens know that genuine patriotism comes from speaking out against those people who try to cheapen our democracy with scapegoat politics that avoids the real issues upon which our nation needs to get to work.
