Top Ten Reasons I Support Barack Obama Over Clinton!

Now check out the Top Reasons I Support Obama Over McCain

After a couple years of closely following the candidates' voting records and watching their debates during the primary season, I am convinced that Obama is not only the best Democratic candidate available, but that he is someone who offers genuine hope for a better America.

The reasons I like Obama more than the other Democrats are listed below. I have not focused in detail on vitally important issues like Global Warming, Health Care, and A Women's Right to Choose because the differences between the Democratic candidates on these fronts is minimal at best. On those issues it's more a matter of who we can trust. Who acts out of principle and not out political convenience:

1 - He was active in campaigns and rallies against the Iraq War from as early as 2002. He continued speaking out against the war at a time when polls showed 2/3 of Americans supporting an invasion. This unpopular position shows not only his independent thinking, but his sound judgment as well.

2 - He showed his courage in an early debate by stating that he'd be willing to have dialogue with Iran during the first year of his Presidency. Oddly enough, Hillary attacked him on this issue. He also showed his willingness to challenge the Washington status quo by proposing to engage post-Castro Cuba. The American embargo--which because of political interest groups has not been debated--has ravaged the Cuban economy and added to the plight of the already poor Cuban people. His courage in refusing to accept the mold among Washington insiders gives hope that we can change our standing in the world and regain the respect that we once had.

3 - He was a part of the most major ethics reform bill to have been passed in recent years in the Senate. The same efforts were central to his career as an Illinois State Senator. There he helped write one of the rare ethics laws in Illinois, which the Washington Post described as "the most ambitious campaign reform in nearly 25 years, making Illinois one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure." He has since upped the ante and refused to take any money from Washington lobbyists. Hillary Clinton has refused to do the same.

4 - Democracy for America, a champion of progressive values, believes that he, along with Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards, are the only real progressive candidates out there. And his experience is a testament to that. As a state legislator, he worked with both Democrats and Republicans in drafting successful legislation on health care reform. He sponsored a law enhancing tax credits for low-income workers, and promoted increased subsidies for child care. Obama also led the passage of legislation mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they stopped. He sponsored legislation to bar job and housing discrimination against gays, and he received a "100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptive." Knowing this there's is little reason to doubt that he is a progressive through and through, with deep convictions that he acted on even when having had to work with a Republican controlled senate for several years as a state legislator.

5- More than any of the other candidates, he realizes that acting on his values and explaining them with conviction will do far more to create a working majority than will political triangulation. This conviction and his ability to effectively express it is what makes him so appealing to voters who are not only Independent, but Republican too. That he outgains all his Democratic opponents in support from Republicans and Independents even though he sacrifices his values less than them is a sign that he is the most likely candidate to bring about change.

6 - He was against approving a resolution which deemed that it was a "vital national interest" to act against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The measure labeled the military force, which is much made up in large part of ordinary Iranians, a terrorist organization and gave an opening to the Bush administration to attack Iran. Although he didn't vote in the measure because he knew it was inevitable that it would pass (73-26), he was outspoken in his opposition from before the day of the vote. His worries about the recklessness of the Bush administration proved true just recently when the NIE report came out saying that Iran had stopped actively trying to build Nuclear Weapons in 2003, proving that the Bush administration was using belligerent language to inflate the urgency of the matter (so as to pursue a military solution). This had "WMD" and "imminent threat" written all over it again. Hillary Clinton, so as to appear "tough" on foreign policy, repeated the mistake of trusting the president again.

7 - He broadened the scope about which we must think of terrorism. He did this by acknowledging that the threat of terrorism is, among other things, tied directly to the realities of global poverty. This, I believe is a fundamental change in discourse, from one in which the only solution for national security was based on our ability to find terrorists and kill them to one which demonstrates a more complete understanding of the problem. This again shows that he is someone who can think independently and outside the box. Says Obama: "In countries wracked by poverty and conflict, citizens long to enjoy freedom from want. And since extremely poor societies and weak states provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism, and conflict, the United States has a direct national security interest in dramatically reducing global poverty and joining with our allies in sharing more of our riches to help those most in need [...] As president, I will double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed toward worthwhile goals. For the last 20 years, U.S. foreign assistance funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. It is in our national security interest to do better."

8 - Poll after poll has shown over the past year that he has the best chance of any Democratic candidate of beating his Republican opponent.

9 - He is geniunely different from Hillary Clinton. Clinton has become a symbol for political calculation, someone who wants to win, but who has forgotten why it is important to win. In this vein, she is the only candidate who refuses to present a concrete plan to protect social security; she is the only candidate who has not revealed exactly when she will withdraw our troops from Iraq; and she is the only candidate who refuses to answer clearly on immigration. These recent stances come after years of taking right-wing stances on national security issues, from approving the Iraq war and supporting the original Patriot Act, to voting in support of the sale of cluster bombs, and even the Iran resolution.

10 - One final reason, which is perhaps the least concrete, but nevertheless possibly more important than all the others, is that he represents a real hope for change. Clinton's voting record has shown an underlying cynicism regarding change, showing that she is willing to sacrifice her values for some preconceived notion of electability. This has led her to pander to the right on a number of issues (including fundamentally important ones like war). Obama, on the other hand, won 70% of the votes cast in the Illinois Senatorial elections by campaigning on an anti-war, progressive platform. And one still sees his principles in what at first appear to be unpopular stances, e.g. in his willingness to have dialogue with even our most trenchant enemies. These are stances that signal that he has not gone completely Washington yet. I will vote for Obama for a number of reasons, but among them is that I still have hope that he could provide another way, another sort of politics. One that doesn't feel it has to be slave to a certain militant discourse to appear strong. One that hasn't become cynical in feeling that the only way change can come about is by reducing the extent of change that can take place. Obama has pandered less to the right than Clinton has, yet he has much stronger support from the right than she does. And in this vein, his invocation of Reagan is very accurate. Regardless of how much he disagreed with his policies, he realizes that Reagan was a transformative figure because he was able to win with landslide support for his ideas from the whole of the country. With the failure of Republican leadership in recent years, Obama presents the same potential for Democrats. After all, there is no reason why an inspiring politician who we can trust could not unite voters from across the country to get behind issues like Health Care, a Respectable Foreign Policy, and Clean Energy. These have become known as Democratic values but are really actually American values. Obama realizes this and has argued this very fact ever since he first spoke on the national scene. That is why I have the audacity to hope.

Click to Watch the New Hampshire Telegraph Editorial Board Interview with Obama for an In-Depth Look at his Views

Obama for 2008!

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