Endorsements
I just got the boys to bed and went to make some phone calls in support of Obama, and got a message that their servers are overwhelmed by the number of hits they’re getting, and please try back in a little while.
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There’s been a lot of endorsements in the Presidential election, and generally I’m not particularly moved by them. But, in thinking of why I support Obama, I realized that two endorsements have made a big difference to me.
One is from someone I’m not going to name, as I don’t think he’s made a public statement of his endorsement. (Because he’s the director of an organization that doesn’t make endorsements.) But he’s from Illinois, and has devoted his life to anti-poverty work. He worked with Obama when he was in the state senate, and he says he’s the real deal. His support convinces me that there’s substance to go with the soaring rhetoric.
The other is Karen Mulhauser, who is a former executive director of NARAL. She’s also the "fairy godmother" of the Women’s Information Network. WIN was founded in 1989 by young women who had worked on the Dukakis campaign and then came to Washington DC and tried to find political jobs, and didn’t have much luck. They went to Karen and said "we need something to help us compete with the ‘old boys network.’" And Karen opened up her address book for them, and WIN was born. And now there’s been a full generation of young women who have had doors opened to them because of WIN. Karen’s endorsement gives me the confidence that no, I’m not betraying my feminist ideals by supporting Obama.
February 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
The astonishingly hostile reactions from some women’s groups to Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama has, I think, done Hillary no good with anyone not centered on fringe feminism. No sense that there is a hunger for common good politics, which has been the motivator of Obama’s astonishing rise.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
http://thepage.time.com/2008/05/03/you-cant-make-this-up/