I remember in 1980 when George Bush the First won some early contest and said he had “big mo” (for “momentum.”) This was uttered shortly before Ronald Reagan cleared the rest of the map, erasing any trace of Bush’s big mo.

I relate that as a preface to my reading of our current situation: At least from this office in greater Los Angeles, Obama seems to have the big mo. I don’t think there was much excitement about Hillary Clinton to begin with — this observation is colored not only by my tracking of media reports, but also my personal experience as a state party delegate — but now there’s even less. People don’t like her, and let’s not forget:  Yes, elections are a popularity contest. Some don’t like her positions, some don’t like her judgment (that would be me), and some just don’t like her (that would be many people across the spectrum). Her alternative, Barack Obama, seems better positioned in every way:  people aren’t attacking his ideas, he’s seen as having shown better judgment (by people including me), and people in general seem to like him (including Republicans).

Not just that, he’s running a better campaign now. No matter how well-funded each Democratic candidate is (and their funding is at historic levels), neither can do penetration advertising buys in all those markets this Tuesday. So the trick is to capture the media every day with one story. If you’ve been checking in since Thursday’s debate, the candidate doing that has been Obama. He’s got all the news locked up again today, the angle being his tour with Teddy Kennedy and the seeming excited thrills Kennedy is generating on the trail.

(A side note:  With me personally, an endorsement from Kennedy is a negative endorsement. In some things I’m old-fashioned. One of those things is the belief that people who kill young girls and walk away from the scene should do prison time. I don’t care what their last name is. But as I said, I’m old-fashioned.)

I was invited to the debate but couldn’t attend. (Imagine my frustration at that.) But I did watch it later and there was Obama again, looking and sounding like what many of us would hope for in a president. He’s cool and thoughtful and seems real. Next to him was Hillary, her uncomfortable smile plastered on her face, her lips issuing — again — her obvious lies about why she initially supported the war in Iraq when really she didn’t. I actually felt sorry for her until I remembered someone else with her last name who lied to me for years. Those were certainly better times, but I didn’t like being lied to then (whether they were silly lies about “not inhaling” or lies told under oath), and those times could have been even better had that person focused more squarely on enacting a vision for the future — rather than being forced to deal with one personal failing after another. I don’t want the Clintons and their baggage back.

Obama expresses a hope of uniting the people in this country — and that’s what we need. I don’t think any one person can do that, but one person at the top certainly sets the tone. Don’t believe me? Look at the past seven years.

This Tuesday will mark the first time since moving to Los Angeles in 1988 that I won’t be in town on election day. I like to go and vote. I like to wait in line, I like to chat with other people waiting, I like to glance at the sign-in sheet to see if my neighbors have come yet, and I like to ask the poll workers about turnout. I especially like wearing the “I have voted” sticker all day. I remember when I was 18 or so and much of the family — my father, my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, a kid or two, and I —  piled into a car and went to vote. My father said something corny about how we’d just “performed our duty” or something like that that I didn’t appreciate, but much as he made me wince I felt he was right. (And I think that most years my father and I canceled each other’s vote out — and my mother decided elections.)

While I’ll miss voting on election day, I won’t miss out on voting. Especially now when I think we really need a new broom to sweep clean. Last night when I got home I checked the mail and happily extracted from the pile my absentee ballot, opened it, and filled in the circle for Barack Obama.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.