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Barack Obama is our gateway drug

December 6, 2005

Barack Obama is our gateway drug. He has it, that semi-mythical ability to turn Republicans into Democrats. He’s the best politician I’ve ever seen. More eloquently than anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, he makes the point that the American Dream is a progressive dream.

The anecdotal stories from my friends and family in Illinois, Republican and Democrat alike, all say the same thing. He’s really good. He’s a great senator. He’ll be the president of the United States some day. I’ve seen devoted Republicans leap to his defense when he’s criticized. I’ve seen people who don’t normally follow politics rave about his speeches when they are reproduced in the newspaper.

He won counties in Illinois that had been voting Republican since Abraham Lincoln was on the ballot. He won the Illinois primary the old-fashioned, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” way. With little money, little experience, and a funny name, he vastly outshone machine candidates and self-financing millionaires and (it was Illinois, after all) corrupt wife-beaters. That vote in that primary, shortly before I moved to Wisconsin, was one of the best votes I’ve cast.

Ryan Lizza has an article in The New Republic arguing that Senator Obama should run for president in 2008:

Obama, you may remember, is the lanky 44-year-old from Illinois elected to the Senate last year. He is the most promising politician in America, and eventually he is going to run for president. The case for running now is not that it is the perfect moment for him to run. It’s not. It is just that it may be the best chance he will ever get.

Everyone thinks Barack Obama should run for president at some point. Lizza makes a pretty fun case for why 2008 is the right time. I can’t say I disagree. The number two slot would rock, as well. Feingold/Obama 2008 would be one hell of a ticket.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 3:53 pm, 6 December 2005 and filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

5 Responses to “Barack Obama is our gateway drug”

  1. 1. SAM Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 7:26 pm

    Damn right, that will be a hell of a ticket. I do hope obama make the right choice and do what he thinks is best for himself. If he do choice to run for president I honestly know he will win and shine a new light on america. Maybe even get us out of this mess bush has put us in and make life here in america a much better one. so to Obama, my dreams lies in your hand my brother, make us all proud.

  2. 2. Chris Hallquist Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 8:27 pm

    >With little money, little experience, and a funny name, he vastly outshone machine candidates and self-financing millionaires and (it was Illinois, after all) corrupt wife-beaters.

    I honestly think the name may help him. It keeps anyone from saying something like, “which of those guys named John are we talking about again?”

  3. 3. Ben Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 9:20 pm

    I think that’s true. The “funny name” quip was a reference to his keynote speech at the 2004 convention:

    I’m not talking about blind optimism here — the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

    Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

  4. 4. Steve R Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 9:27 pm

    “He won counties in Illinois that had been voting Republican since Abraham Lincoln was on the ballot.”

    To be fair, he was running against the King of the Carpetbagger Wingnuts, who thought every single issue was related in some way to abortion, but I’ll grant that his political skills are excellent. I think he’d raise the level of discourse, and I’d love to see that, even if I might not vote for him.

    McCain v. Obama would be a race for the ages. A principled, articulate conservative and a principled, articulate liberal fighting it out. What a difference from this last election.

  5. 5. Ben Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 11:56 pm

    McCain v. Obama would be a huge improvement over Bush v. Kerry. And not least because it will guarantee that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States. :P

    There’s a lot to admire about John McCain, but I (and I know I’m in the minority here) don’t think he would make a strong candidate. I’m much more worried about Guiliani. McCain is getting old, and he’s not an inspiring speaker. A significant portion of the religious right dislikes him because he’s not a theo-con, and the efforts he’s making to get back in their good graces will ruin his much-vaunted moderate image.

    He’ll have money and the Bush fund-raising machine, which seems to have been the price for his hug-and-make-up campaign for Bush last year. But Republicans always have money. That’s why they’re Republicans. Fund-raising won’t win the presidency; both major candidates will have the funds to get their message out.

    What’s left for McCain is a mostly chimerical reputation as a moderate, which he isn’t. He’s a principled conservative (and that’s rare enough these days that people confuse it with moderation). But that reputation won’t survive an election campaign, to say nothing of the GOP primary.

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