Michelle’s moving moment

As a die-hard liberal, I have found myself a bit surprised at my own disgust over this political season. Eight years ago—before I had a child, while I was still in college—I was a huge anti-Bush activist, organizing local community events and protests, making signs and stickers for my friends to use, and generally being angry every moment of every day while Dubya was in office.

Today I’m still angry at politicians policing the bodies of all women, policing the rights of people to get married and be happy, and generally policing everything they legally can about us. I think the public education system is a farce that exists to help them control us and keep us docile—from the glorified nationalism to the “approved” curricula used—and though I’m not even yet thirty, I find myself tired of it all. Isn’t just SSDD, after all?I heard a lot of good things about Michelle Obama’s speech—something I would have paid attention to as it aired live eight years ago, as I did Obama’s speech as a senator—so I decided to watch. And let me tell you, I am inspired. I think that woman actually believes what she is saying, and I believe much of it, too. As disappointed as I am that we don’t yet have universal healthcare, that the wars are not over, that global warming continues to escalate while we have no plan for solvency, not even any steps taken toward renewable resources—I know I don’t want that self-important rich guy, who probably never knew for a day in his life what it’s like to be an average American, to be in that chair. (For the record, I don’t want Clint Eastwood there, either.)

Barack Obama is a good man; he is a good president, too. He is not the great president we needed—not the FDR we needed—to get us out of the quagmire the previous administration left us with, but he’s a good one. And he’s our best option at the moment. While I would love some kind of New Deal to help us all out right now, I will be happy casting my vote for a good man with good intentions, who has struggled to get us out of the muck and has made some progress. And I know from experience how hard, how impossible, it is to please everyone—and that’s what my fellow liberals and me are demanding from President Obama at the moment.

Let’s give him some support and see what he can do by 2016, shall we? Let’s head to the polls together. Because as much as there is still to be done—as much as we want to be done already—his loss  would only increase that pile tenfold at the hands of a man who’d like us all to travel back in time to the fifties and make corporations people.

Click here to watch Michelle’s lovely speech, and pledge to vote with me this November.