Not So Fast, Mr. Ellis.

Fuckup 2008, Mr. Ellis says.

He's entitled to his opinion, certainly. He makes a living off of his opinion and his rambling output, which is far greater and far more lucrative than mine. So his opinion is worth something.

Quite how much, only Mr. Ellis knows. But. I'm here to talk politics, (as per usual) and that brings in a whole other can of worms. Because, you see, for Mr. Gravel (or any other candidate who is failling by the wayside now) to be important, he needed people to pay attention to him early, and build a grassroots network. In other words, get the good word out.

This is where the American populus comes in. I was introduced to Mr. Gravel by Zach only a couple days ago. I hear after Iowa, he has since dropped out. Depending on who you ask, this is a failure or a success of the internet. On the one hand, I would not have heard of Mr. Gravel without Zach, but on the other one, the information comes too late to be of use.

If you want to make a difference in presidential elections, you have to get involved early. YOU have to go out, and tell your friends about this candidate, and get the word out. I am reminded of the savage quote from the West Wing, where someone (inevitably striding...) says "If you skip jury duty, you can't complain about the OJ verdict," which is a nice way of saying, this is a participatory democracy, if you don't participate, your perfect candidate does not have to appear.

Iowa, as we need to be reminded, is a strange place. If you want to meet a candidate and speak to him or her, while they are in Iowa, you can look up where they are going to an event near you, and you can ask them a question or two there. Hell, at least two candidates moved their families to Iowa 4 years ago. The time to know and get the word out about Mr. Gravel was about nineteen months ago, when there was time for his supporters to accumulate and coalesce.

But now, and this month is far, far too late. The Obama nation has swept up most of Iowa's Democrats, and the rest went to Hillary or Edwards. Don't get me wrong. I like Obama, and it is not just because his house is the physically closest to my parents'. It is because he promises change, and there's a praticular little thing about his past that I like. He graduated the first black editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review. This is prestigious, and it is hard to oversell it's importance.

He could have made five million dollars a year in New York City law firm doing nothing but shaking people's hands when he left Harvard (fight fiercely...). Read that sentence again. I'll wait.

Mr. Obama went to the South Side of Chicago to do political organizing instead. The only reason why he was a lecturer at the University of Chicago is because they're a group of people who are contrary, haughty and insufferably intelligent. Had he gone anywhere else in the city, he could have been a tenured faculty member before he stepped foot on campus, if not the chair of the department.

That's not to say he's clean, or he's perfect, or that he appeals to me completely. There is the money he took from large drug companies and HMO's to fund his campaign, his "present" votes on some major issues, and his vote yes on the Patriot Act.

But. He promises change, and right now, we need it. By we, I mean America, but then I think of America's effect on the rest of the world, and then I realize, the world, too, needs a change from Mr. Bush. So I can be more inclusive, and perhaps should be.

Oh, to hell with it. I support Obama. And by that, I don't mean a "I hate everyone else, and I hate him less." I mean, Edwards leaves a slime trail, Hillary Clinton smiles like she's trying to hide her fangs, and I'd rather vote for Obama than those two. I will affirmatively for someone, rather than against another candidate.

I don't care if I look stupid. If I show that I am invested in this, it's because I believe everything American above 3 should be. I care. I'll even trust Obama's gut, and I've got faith that he'll pick good people to surround himself with for the job.

I'll bring this back to Mr. Ellis. He calls it a fuck up, likely, because the American people will pick a candidate that moves toward the center, and because little progress would be made on how the United States extracts blood and oil from the rest of the world regardless of who is elected.

I don't know if Obama can or will want to bring Nike or Pepsi or Nestle to heel. But I believe that he's a candidate that will do what he thinks is best in stressful situations, has the mental capacity to interpret crisis-es with subtlety and accuracy. I believe he'll undo or at least try to repair the damage to America's international image and the Patriot Act.

I'll take it. I'll take it (as Refused put it) hook, line and sinker.