Where’s the peanut butter?!

I haven’t written about politics in a while and have been pretty happy about that because for the last 7 years it’s been almost impossible to touch the subject without winding up incredibly, incredibly frustrated about a situation it’s very hard to do anything about. I’ve marched, written letters to the paper, boycotted companies, avoided buying the products of sweatshops, felt righteous indignation and as far as I can tell a lot of the world is still pretty broken…but there’s an opportunity for change coming again, so here goes.

Last Saturday Washington held the Presidential primary caucuses. Washington does this funny thing where ballots are mailed out but the delegates representing the Democratic selection from the state are allocated exclusively by the caucus (making the ballot meaningless for Democrats) so I went to the caucuses. This was after Hillary Clinton spoke to a capacity audience on Thursday night at Pier 30 on the Seattle waterfront and after Obama addressed a capacity audience at Key Arena on Friday afternoon. I didn’t make it to the Clinton speech but I did get to Key Arena on Friday.

The Obama event at Key Arena was really overwhelming. He was due to speak some time around 1 but the doors opened at 11 so I tried to get there in time to make it in. I walked up past the west side of the Science Center and when I got to the Exhibition Pavilion I realized there was a huge line. So I started following it back to the Center House, toward the Opera House, around Mercer Stadium, back past EMP, and all the way past the east side of the Science Center (and proceeded to kick myself for not starting out a block away from where I started!). I could not believe what I was seeing - this was a work day and we were just a day before the primary, right? So I got clever and thought “there’s no way they’ll fill Key Arena, I’ll go get some of the famous velvet foam and get back in line after most of the people have filtered in.”

And they filled the 18,000 seats at Key Arena. Still, about 3,000 of us waited outside to hear the address over the PA. We waited out in the cold and drizzly rain for about an hour, listening to inspirational music from inside and shivered from the weather. Eventually a motorcade appeared near the southeast corner of the arena and Obama got out to address us with a bullhorn. It was impossible to hear him from where I stood, but it was still an invigorating experience standing with thousands of people who couldn’t get into our basketball arena but all waited to hear him anyway. And I think we were all pleased and inspired that he did speak to us rather than trying to stick to a tight schedule and get inside to address the larger crowd.

Speculation about Obama as a presidential candidate started circulating as early as the 2004 election and at the time I thought the idea of a black man running as a serious contender for President of the United States was crazy - the candidates around that time certainly were and are. But here we are in 2008 and right now it’s hard to think about trading Obama’s progressive platform and charisma for another candidate. He might not quite have been my top candidate on every single issue, but a candidate is a sum of parts - not just a list of positions on issues. In that larger equation he got my caucus support on Saturday and is almost sure to get my vote in November.