Jill Rees: Welcome Press

Well who would have seen that coming? Palin’s home electors in the Alaskan newspaper Anchorage Daily News have said they’re gonna vote Obama, Republican Colin Powell has come over from the dark side, along with many former Republican black voters. People who never voted before, young and old, black and white, they’re switching, and they’re switching in public, proudly.

A leading online newspaper asks, if Obama were Republican and McCain a Democrat, who would you vote for?  At least among the media, the issue of Barack Obama’s colour has gone out of the window. Not only is he being compared in quite serious circles with Christ and Superman, but he is more realistically being compared to John F Kennedy.

 Young, idealistic, making few promises they thought they couldn’t keep (including, strangely perhaps, the promise early in the Campaign that he would ‘stop the sea level rising’, presumably through finally signing the Kyoto protocol.) Obama makes people believe. In his closing speech in Canton , Ohio he said:

‘I ask of you what has been asked of Americans throughout our history. I ask you to believe, not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours.’ They believe in him, and because of the way he speaks, they believe in themselves at the same time.

When Obama sombrely descended from his plane coming into Hawaii to see his very sick Grandmother, you thought the script was honestly being written by God Himself. The hope of America, the light at the end of the dark tunnel for the rest of the world, cared more than anything for his Grannie, the woman he said ‘poured everything she had into me’. Republicans who made snide remarks about publicity stunts were hushed by a shocked public. Obama, as his campaign draws to an end, has the confidence to be genuinely warm-hearted, and all America loves him for it.  

Even the finance for the Obama campaign has something of the people about it. Anyone who wants to can log in to his website and make a donation. Unlike previous elections, and unlike the McCain campaign, people who have very little are donating small amounts, but millions of small donations make the richest Campaign in history, and Obama isn’t beholden to any big companies or sectors for it. his million dollar advert on prime TV this weekend is one of the benefits he can reap from the public’s generosity.

In his speech this week, the last full week of campaigning, Obama speaks of a family whose son is ill with a debilitating and incurable condition, who cannot get the proper treatment because their private health insurance turned down his case. The mother  Robyn wrote,  

"I ask only this of you — on the days where you feel so tired you can’t think of uttering another word to the people, think of us. When those who oppose you have you down, reach deep and fight back harder."  This mother of a dying son believes that thinking of her suffering will be enough to encourage Obama. In other words, she believes that Obama really really cares about her family. That is his secret; people believe that he genuinely cares about them.

Compare this to the reaction to Sarah Palin’s admirable sentiments about supporting special needs children, where the reporter merely points out that while her words are pleasant, she actually opposes amendment 51, which would provide funding for the project.

‘We’re not outa the woods yet,’ as Palin might say, in her jokey ‘Alaska girl’ way. Thousands of black voters have allegedly been handed leaflets warning them that should they try to vote, they will be arrested for any loose legal ends, unpaid parking tickets and so on.  In other areas, voters are expected to queue for over 4 hours, making it more difficult for women with families to vote, if they have to pick up children. As usual, voting is on a working day, so employers may make things difficult for staff hoping for time off to queue up. We saw these tactics and more in 2000, when the tragedy of losing Al Gore as president was not then fully realised.

Let’s say when we wake up on Wednesday, Barack Obama is president. We who watch anti-CIA conspiracy films all know that it isn’t the President who runs America. As well as potential assassins, there are plenty of enemies for Obama policies on health, education, green policies, pulling out of Iraq and so on. Even Obama’s running mate Joe Biden has warned there will be a testing period for the new president. Those of us who totally believe in all the CIA conspiracy movies (and we are legion) are not above worrying if a home-grown president-weakening crisis might be in the planning stage right now.

Obama could do with a bit of luck if and when he becomes President. We hope that the relief the world will feel at the end of the Bush era will encourage certain ‘rogue’ elements to make him a peace offering, to help him onto a firm footing. Steps towards appeasement with the US in Iran, in Palestine, and in Pakistan would help enormously.

We are hoping Obama will turn out to be a world leader we can all trust, but we should remember that, although he may be the first ever national leader apart from Obafemi  Awolowo who knows what it is like to live in a little African village, it is the United States of America he will be President of, and his first allegiance is with his own people over there.

947 words

Jill Rees

27 October 2008

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Tags: 2008, articles, Awolowo, closing speech, if Obama wins, Iran, Leadershiip, Palestine, presidential elections