The Real Race Begins (and a cartoon)

In its handling of the Rev. Wright and Priest Pfleger situations, the false rumors of Obama's anti-Israel sentiments, and the lies about Michelle Obama, the Obama campaign has demonstrated an uncanny ability to handle all the curveballs (or knuckleballs, to use a more appropriate baseball analogy) thrown its way. But now the general election begins, and as easy as it was to compare the Clinton Campaign's tactics to Karl Rove and the Republicans, we probably have no idea what we're in for over the summer and into the fall. From his race to his name to his patriotism, the Republicans will not leave any card unturned and not hesitate to rewrite Obama's background, history, and years as a public servant. They will do this both subtly (by McCain and his closest people) and overtly (by his supporters more on the fringe). All signs suggest that the Obama Campaign knows this and that it is ready to handle it, but, still, we have no idea what might happen. Let's hope Obama can catch those knuckleballs.

Oh, and this recent cartoon by Mike Peters in the Dayton Daily News was just too good to pass up:

The Lost Meaning of Memorial Day

I was on the 6 this morning, and at 51st street, a man got on the train, asking for donations for himself and his family. The man was like many panhandlers: homeless, somewhat old, hobbled, selling some sort of newspaper for a buck. But the man was also a Vietnam Vet, and he used his war experience to spice up his script asking for money on this Friday, the beginning of a long weekend.

He reminded his (mostly ignoring) public that there was much more to Memorial Day than an extra-long weekend, sales at the mall, or a barbecue. It used to mean something: recognition of the sacrifices that thousands of Americans have made over the years in defense of our country. Along with that recognition of the dead should also be the honor for the living, but as the man on the subway reminded us we fail to do so.

This has nothing to do with support of the war but rather respect for the selfless individuals who do what most of us would rather not.

A few things worth thinking about this weekend:

• According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, one out of every three homeless men are veterans. 200,00 veterans are on the street on any given night, and more than 400,000 veterans will experience homelessness over the course of a year. Those numbers are staggering,
  

• No soldier deserves the neglect exposed at Walter Reed Hospital as exposed by The Washington Post last February.

• No soldier should feel like s/he as no choice left but to kill his/herself, as has been the case with more than 1000 troops, a fact swept under the rug by the current administration and most of the mainstream media.
  

• The fact that one in eight soldiers coming back from Iraq suffers from PTSD--and that fewer than half of them seek treatment for it--should astound and upset us.
  

Technically, Memorial Day commemorates our fallen soldiers, and Veterans Day commemorates the living who have survived. Is there really any difference when we're ignoring the living, letting them live in poverty and die right before our eyes?

Enjoy the weekend. But don't forget the people who can't.

Hoosiers: From Gene Hackman's Lips to Obama's (Goofy Big) Ears

So with Barack a little bit behind in Indiana, I thought it would be only appropriate to post one of the best sports movie speeches from one of the best sports movies ever. Hoosiers is, as any sports or movie fan should know, the Oscar-nominated classic about a small-town high school basketball team in Indiana that beats the odds to win the state championship. It's based on a true story, with the 1954 Milan HS team upsetting the bigger, heavily favored teams to win the 'chip.

Why can't tomorrow be any different? As Coach Norman Dale (Hackman) says, "Remember what got you here." Simple but important advice, and if Barack heeds similar advice tomorrow and throughout what could be one more month of primaries, I'm confident the Milan HS of the 2008 Democratic Primaries will prevail.

Who's Ready for a Third (and Fourth) Bush Term?

As expected last night, Hillary won PA--a state as perfectly suited to her as any--dragging the primary season into May and possibly June. Mathematically, Hillary has no shot at winning the nomination: even with her ten-point win, Barack has many more delegates, states, and votes. Numerically, the victory didn't change a thing. If anything, the fact that Obama went from being down 25 points to inching within single digits should be just as big a deal, but the media won't tell you that.

The media won't tell you that, because the media loves the race. It's new, different, and exciting. And, given the fact that the Republicans have sealed their nomination, there's very little else to talk about. A woman and an African American, fighting until the death in the most historic primary, probably ever. Two brilliant candidates, going at it, attacking each other, with the proportion of time devoted to the critical issues--Iraq, healthcare, the economy, education, climate change, etc--even smaller than it was before! Chris Matthews, who is often full of meaningless rants, was right on point last night, when he critiqued the same business that employs him: "We've created the delusion that this race is still open...If you work hard and play by the rules---the Clinton maxim--then this election process is moving forward and Barack Obama is moving toward the nomination"

Supposedly, the Clintons love the Democratic Party. Theoretically, they care about its goals, and they care about its success in November. They say they don't want John McCain to be elected and continue another eight years of the same failed Bush policies. Every day that the race drags on, when it is realistically over, brings us another day closer to McCain's inauguration.

Has Obama put Hillary away? Absolutely not. But he's been in the lead for months now, and the burden is not on him. (Here might be an appropriate place to note that, if Obama was losing by the same margins as Hillary is, he would have been forced out by Howard Dean and the party leaders long ago.) By not throwing in the towel out of respect for her party and the country she claims to love, Hillary has reinforced all the negative stereotypes that have been directed her way. Her recent attack ads, in which, according to the NY Times--a Clinton endorser-- she used tactics "torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook" are not helping. Still, given all that, a sliver of hope remains that she may decide to try to recognize reality and (somewhat) restore her image so that she can continue what had been a largely remarkable political career.

Somewhere, John McCain is smiling. Let's hope that we don't look back on April 22nd, 2008, as the day that he clinched the election.

Why I Support Barack Obama

Back in December, at a Chanukah party, I was explaining to a friend's parent that I would be spending the first week of the new year (including my birthday) in New Hampshire, canvassing for Barack Obama ahead of the January 8th primary. My parents--who, for better or for worse, normally will fund whatever I want to do--told me I'd have to pay my way to get there. So up to NH I went with 50 New Yorkers, in vans of ten people each, headed toward a Red Roof Inn to share a room with three strangers. At the time, I didn't really know the specific reason why I was going, but I knew that I needed to go; I couldn't exactly formulate my reasons to this friend's dad, and I clearly couldn't convince my mom, who told me to find my own $250 to canvass for Obama in two feet snow during my vacation.

But, by the time our van dropped us off at 34th street and 8th avenue, one day after Barack's primary loss and a day after entering my third decade, I realized I knew why I went, but, until now, I never put my thought process into words:

We are at a critical juncture at a critical time. Any election is important, but the winner of the 2008 election will have a unique opportunity to either continue the policies of the current administration--which have failed us and the world--or to reshape and reform the United States' role in the world for the better. We have a chance to begin to make amends for the past eight years and to begin to move the country forward in a more positive direction.

The direction in which the Democrats want to take the country is quite clear. From Iraq to healthcare to climate change, the Democrats vying for the '08 nomination have long agreed about what we must do in 2009. But this time, it's not just about the issues. If it were, then we could well be getting ready to see who Joe Biden or Bill Richardson will pick as their vice presidential candidate.

This year, it's about the issues plus some. And that "some" is what is critically important. That "some" is what makes Barack Obama different. He has the ability to mobilize young Americans who've never cared about politics before, to make people proud of what their country stands for, to bring together Americans who thought they shared little in common other than a flag, and to show the world that, when we speak of progress, we actually mean it.

Sometimes it's easy to forget the democratic ideals that define America. To honor those ideals, we must include those people young and old; black, white, Asian, and Latino; rich and poor; Christian, Muslim and, Jewish; and, of course, Republican and Democrat. In a splintering country stumbling to lead a splintering world, now is the time for unification, and Barack Obama is the only man (or woman) who can truly unite us all.

More than 4,000 American families' final sights of their children were in caskets coming off a plane from Baghdad. Nearly 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. 47 million Americans' don't have health insurance. Our economy is in shambles. Politicians have cited these numbers repeatedly, but how many of them can actually mobilize our society to care to do something about them and maybe, just maybe, get something done without leaving out or ignoring large parts of the population?

Barack's message of hope has been bashed by the left and right as idealistic, empty rhetoric. But without hope, without the ability to envision a better country and a better world, we can never expect to improve; we'd simply be running in place, accomplishing very little and digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole without a bottom in sight. With such hope and with such dreams, we have a unique opportunity to escape that hole; if we fail to act now, who knows what may happen in the next eight years. But with a man of integrity and good judgment, honesty and intelligence like Barack Obama running for president, I feel a lot safer putting my trust in Barack Obama.

It's 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing.

I know who I want answering that call.

Letter to Candidate Nader: Please Don't Run!

Here is the text of an email I recently sent to Ralph Nader about his decision to run again and possibly botch the Democrats' chance of winning just like he did in 2000. If you feel the same way I do, shoot an email to info@nader.org

Dear Mr. Nader:

I am a 20-year old college student writing to you to ask that you please reconsider your decision to run for for president. In the fall of 2006, I attended a symposium here at Johns Hopkins University in which you spoke for an hour or so about your honorable work and the current status of the nation; I was impressed with your talk, and I had a lot of respect for what you had done to support everyday Americans during your career. However, 2008 is not the time for you to test the political waters for the fourth consecutive time. We are at a critical juncture and possess what may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reverse (or, at the very least, mend) the past eight years of political history to put the United States back on track. This opportunity cannot be wasted and, by throwing your hat into the ring once again, you are risking us doing just that.

Please, Mr. Nader, for the good of the citizens that you claim to support, rethink your decision about running in '08.

Thank you,
Michael Glenwick
Johns Hopkins University
Class of 2010
International Studies and Spanish Double Major

Barack From the Dead

So it's been 2+ months since my last post, so I've got a lot of catching up to do. So...what's happened since my mid-December '07?

1) I went to DJ school in NYC, and didn't really learn to DJ.

2) I went to New Hampshire for seven days before the primary there to canvas for my main man, Barack Obama. It was an awesome, truly incredible experience (even if he lost). More on that later.

3) I went to Israel for ten days on a Birthright trip with a group from Hopkins and Goucher. It was great, as well, some of the best ten days of my life.

Since my deejaying skills (or lack of it) probably aren't too interesting to most people, and my vacation isn't too relevant a month later, the best place to start is with Obama, to whom I gave seven days of my life in early January--including my birthday.

In five vans designed to hold 12 people each, a group of committed NYers did the five-hour drive to Concord, NH where we spent a week in a Red Roof Inn, four to a room. When we weren't sleeping (which was most of the time), we were knocking on doors, waving signs at major intersections, and basically doing anything the campaign needed from us.

Some lessons learned:

1) NH voters are a whole lot more intelligent than the average American. They know how much attention their small primary gets and how much their vote matters. They know about the issues, and they know about all the candidates, Republicans and Democrats. If half of the U.S. knew half as much as New Hampshirites do, we'd be a better country.

2) Barack has a wider, more diverse coalition than anyone in the media will ever give him credit for. Among our volunteers were college students and some folks who had to be in their 60s if not 70s. There were whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians; men and women; Christians and Jews; rich and poor.

Part of our NY crew talking to a NH voter (in Red Sox cap)

3) A lot of people (at least in NH) despise Hillary. As a proud Democrat, I will support whomever the Party chooses in November, but it's clear that a lot of independent, free-thinking voters (of whom there are many in NH) throughout the country will support McCain come November if Hillary is the nominee. As qualified as she may be (and she is, I think), she's more polarizing than a magnet (sorry, I couldn't resist), and we will have a tough time winning the many independents and significant number of Republicans--or Obamacans, as they are now called--who could be the answer in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

4) The more people get to know Barack, the more they like him, and the more they are ready to support him. When I checked in to the Red Roof Inn, we were 14 points down and came within four points of Hillary. Sure, it was a disappointment but only b/c our hopes were so high. The fact that he made a ten-point jump in seven days was remarkable and a testament to both the strong volunteer support on the ground all over the state and the incredible job of fund-raising the campaign has done.

So, more than a month after the NH primary and two exciting weeks (ten straight!) since Super Tuesday, why bother mentioning the four points above? Because they're all still relevant--maybe even more so than on January 8th--and possible on a larger scale.

1) As much as certain segments of the country care more than usual about the election, most voters across the country haven't educated themselves about the issues that matter and actually gone to the polls in one of the most exciting and critical primaries in decades. Go out and vote. Go to the candidates' websites and watch the debates. It's really not that hard. Billions of people don't get to participate in free elections. Be grateful, and take advantage of your right.

2) Every day, Barack's movement--it's not just a campaign--has brought in more and more people who don't fit the mold that the media has assigned to him. No longer is it (or was it) just about young people and African Americans. Just look at Wisconsin's results last night: women left Hillary to support him, as did working class white men, previously thought to be out of his reach. And in Texas, where Hillary's lead had been in double digits, he's evened things up in the polls, thanks to greater support among Latinos.

3) Hillary's campaign has gotten more and more negative by the day. It's not going to work, and it's going to turn even more people off to her. As great as it is that people are voting for Barack all across the country, it's clear that a legit number of people (especially the moderate Republicans and independents who have been allowed to vote in some Democratic primaries) are voting as much against Hillary as for Barack. She's aiming to win that 51% majority, but, as we say at Hopkins lacrosse games, we want more! This isn't about 1/2 of the country; it's about the whole country, especially those moderates who are turned off by the Clintons.

4) In so many states where Barack wasn't given a chance, he has won or made up significant ground. He has done this a tremendously fast speed and the fact that he has gotten more and more time to make his case known to the American people. And now that he has the momentum of ten straight wins, 25 out of 36 races, and the lead in delegates (pledged and total), the doubters have no choice but to take him seriously. He is the frontrunner now, which brings with it a whole host of new challenges, but also brings legitimacy and added coverage. People who didn't know him before know him now, as we can see in Texas, where a double-digit Clinton lead has already vanished.

So, in a nutshell, that's where I believe the campaign stands as of now, and, in many ways, NH was a microcosm of that. We have two more weeks until the primaries of March 4th, and if Hillary doesn't win both OH and TX in blow-out style, we'll be in good shape for Denver in August and hopefully Washington in November!

P.S. More on the other two exciting events of my winter--deejaying and Israel--to come. Bet you can't wait.