Why I support Obama

It's the day after Super Tuesday...And YES, WE STILL CAN!

Barack Obama leads Hilary Clinton by 13 states to her 8 (New Mexico's results are still coming in and are too close to call). (Check the results here at the CNN election center). She leads in the delegate count though, mostly bolstered by her super-delegate count (the delegates who are high-ranking current or former party officials who do not have to be tied in by the primary or caucus results) - which is really attributable to the time she has been around the Democratic party and the pull she has as Clinton Pt.II. Barack as an up and comer, would naturally be at a disadvantage in this respect because Hilary is not just part of the Establishment, she is the Establishment.

Which is why his claim that ordinary people will be the ones to shape this election, is so compelling. It's not just a bit of political frippery. Obama will need the support of the ordinary rank and file to defeat the established interests and their quid pro quo.

On to another point.

Over the last few days, I have been questioning myself - why is it that I support Barack Obama so fervently? After all, I am from the Caribbean. The US elections don't have much to do with me, at least not in a direct way.

So I have had to examine - why am I so invested in and passionate about Obama winning?

The first and most obvious reason would be that he is black and so am I. That is definitely what drew me to him initially - that tiny, flickering hope that whispered maybe a black man could actually attain leadership of the most powerful and influential country in the world. I started with doubt - and with fear. As time went on and as Michelle Obama spoke most eloquently to those fears, I started to believe.

Though Obama being half-Kenyan, does not have the same background and history of slavery as most of the black people in the Western Hemisphere, the fact that he is black and treated as such and has still risen to where he is, is powerful. The fact still remains that wherever black people are in the Western Hemisphere, we are still at a disadvantage.

Don't roll your eyes - I am well-educated, middle class and relatively comfortable - far be it from me to play the victim. I am not saying it garner pity, I am saying it because it is so. The fact is even in the places where we are majorities (like in the Caribbean) and have political and social power (again like in the Caribbean) there is still the disadvantage of wealth distribution. Me and my cousins are the first generation of my family to be born middle class, to go to university,to have all the options before us, to have nothing denied to us. This is not the same situation with whites - they have had options before them for a very long time and still have the benefit of inherited wealth and jobs set aside for them in family-and-friend run businesses.

I am not bitter. This is how it is, but as my grandfather used to say 'it won't always be so.' He knew that was true - he did not have the simple dignity of the right to vote until he was 40 and already a husband and father of 6 children but he lived to see it become so.

Anyhow I say all that to say this - it will be a glorious day for black people in the West to be able to look at Obama and know that really, truly there is nothing we cannot do or achieve. It will go a long way to easing that cynical, resigned self-doubt that niggles at black people and makes us check ourselves and our ambitions before we even start.

That is the first reason that drew me to Obama. When I think about Hilary Clinton getting the US presidency, I am excited, joke about the idea of getting Bill back in the White House, pleased and proud at the thought of a woman being US president and so on. But when I think about Barack winning, I want to cry, the emotion is so great.

Now! To my other reasons. While the shared factor of race is what drew me to Obama's candidacy, the more I learn about Obama, the more I like him. I like that he is not willing to go along just to get along. When conventional wisdom in the US in 2003 screamed for the war in Iraq, Barack had the conviction to point out that it was a dumb war and he was opposed to dumb wars. As someone who participated in global protests (though to little avail eh?) against the war and as someone dismayed at the way the UK and the US to a lesser extent have been trying entice young Caribbean men to come fight their war (including people I know personally), this means a lot to me. The Iraq war is a terrible, misguided, poorly managed war. It has fanned the flames of Islamic militancy and made the world a more nervy, edgy and unpleasant place to live. Especially when I was living in the UK two years ago, it was like this cobweb of fear was hanging over everything.

I am and have always been disappointed that Hilary Clinton just went along with the conventional wisdom on the Iraq war. It was almost like she had to prove she could be just as ignorant and hawkish as the Republicans. I do not buy her argument then that if she knew now what she knew then, she would not have supported it. Lots of us around the world knew then that it was a bad idea. We knew they should have let Hans Blix finish his job. We knew the US should have waited on UN approval to go to war and that the action was high-handed and arrogant and would damage US relations and image in the world.

Which brings me to my third reason for supporting Obama. Despite all that is said (by myself included) against Americans it is not an evil country. No more evil than any other at least. However George Bush has done so much harm to the US image in the world it is incredible. Every time I see him with his squinty-eyed self on tv, I want to reach through the set and club him. He is a small-minded, parochial moron. How could someone aspire to be a world leader (and American presidents have to be world leaders - it is hard to keep to yourself when you have the third-largest population in the world) and not even have travelled outside of the US? Especially when you are rich as hell? It shows a profound and shocking lack of interest and respect for the rest of the world. And it has been exemplified by Bush's ridiculous, sulky 'if you don't do what we say, we're not talking to you', stick-fingers-in-ears approach to foreign policy.

I am convinced Obama will be different. He has to be. Just by the very fact of being born of an American mother and Kenyan father in Hawaii and living part of his childhood in Indonesia, he already has a grasp and empathy for different cultures and world views. He knows and understands that there are other people in the world and you have to try and get on with them. Which is why I never understood when people ridiculed him for saying he would meet with America's enemies. It is only in this Bushian state that the US is in now, that people would consider that a ludicrous idea. When you are the most powerful country on earth, you have to engage with others. When the US has engaged with other countries it has been better for the world. For pity's sake, the US made common ground with Stalin so as t end WWII. You don't have to like people to engage with them! Isolationism and unilateralism is doom.

I also support Obama because I want the Republicans to lose. With a passion. And I do not think Hilary Clinton can do that. As divided and dispirited as the Republicans are right now, they will rally around the thought of defeating Hilary Clinton. You read it all the time. Hilary does not deserve it, but Republicans have a visceral dislike of her that will cost her in the election and may cost the Democrats the election. It will be unforgiveable if Hilary-hate allows the Republicans back in for a third time in a row.

On the flip side, I am excited by Obama's ability to rally people from both sides around him (not against him) and to overcome partisanship.

I also support Obama because of judgement. Now people make a big deal about Hilary Clinton's so-called 35 years of experience. As a young feminist (no, I do think it is a dirty word - it is what I am and have always been), I cringe when I hear Hilary using this line and then unashamedly riding her husband's accomplishments like a race horse. Take the debate the other night against Obama, when someone asked her how can she be an agent of change when Bushes or Clintons have been in and around the White House for about 30 years (remember, Daddy Bush was Reagan's VP so these two dynasties have been around since 1980). She said that she wanted to be assessed on her own merits - I liked that, I nodded approvingly since everyone knows she's smarter than Bill anyway. She spoke of how proud she was of what her husband had done - and then in the next few sentences went on to list and ride all of his accomplishments, talking up how good it was in the 90s and so on. It was an amazing act of doublespeak. If I had not seen it for myself, I would not have believed it.

Call me an idealistic young feminist, but I want a female leader whose accomplishments are her own and who is not riding her husband's coat-tails to score points. It's humiliating to see Hilary do that - as if we can't do anything without a man. She is still defining herself by her association with a powerful man.

Anyway, I digress from my point about judgement. People talk up lack of experience as a demerit against Obama. May I remind people that George Bush also had 'experience' when he came into the White House? Does anyone remember that he was Governor of Texas - and apparently a quite good and very popular one, for 6 years? Not only that, like Hilary Clinton he could claim 'experience' by virtue of being around the machinations of power for a long time - his daddy was the president for goodness sake! Like Clinton has, he inherited his advisers and strategists. He had an even sounder political pedigree than Clinton in that his brother was also a governor - a very political family, with lots of experience floating around. He dealt with education reform, health care, crime reform and thorny immigration issues (Texas, remember?) before he became president.

George Bush's failing was not lack of experience. It was poor judgement.

So Obama's call that the US needs someone 'who is right on Day One' is entirely valid. Less than a year after taking office, Bush had to deal with 9/11. It would have been difficult for anyone. But a terrible situation has been compounded so many times over by the fact that Bush has dreadful judgement.

The fact that Obama was clear-eyed enough to see that the Iraq war was a terrible mistake when none of the other candidates in the race on either side were able or courageous enough to see and say that, tells me a lot about his judgement.