The cynic cries

I’ve been busy in the evenings the last few days, chasing the rebellious spirit of lightning… but I’ve been coming to work in the morning to watch the speeches from the DNCC from the night before.

In what has been a very busy day today I have slowly watched President bill Clinton speak, ending his speech with barely enough time before closing time, to scratch out a few thoughts…

Let me begin by remind my friends of the intensely political history.  A history which started at a young age where my Grandfather used not so kind terminology to Describe Republicans, and My mom reminded us we were working class, and I took issue with the idea of treating people differently because our judgments on their morality or their inherited physical traits. 

A political history that continued with great interest through two presidential elections, where I kept my very own notebook of electoral college results and added them up on my won, tracing every state so that I would know in the morning exactly who won and by what number and because of what states (and in my Nerdy head, which states I would and would not want to visit later in life).  A history that allowed, or pushed me to leave College prematurely to pursue a political career that I am still uneasy about, but keep the flame of possibility burning in my mind.

A history that a few years ago, left be ragged, rugged looking, stressed and without a personal life so I walked away from it, but never completely, not truly because it seems to be in my blood (like so many other things I’ve noticed)

That political history left me cynical. As cynical as it comes. I’ve heard one candidate speak after another, after another. I’ve heard the surrogates. I’ve met Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer, Madeleine Albright and the Clintons.  Barbara Mikulski, and Nancy Pelosi and Antonio Villaraigoza.  I’ve spoken before the DNC platform committee about GLBT Suicide rates, before it was a trending topic on twitter.  This is not bragging, this is to say, that not much gets to me anymore.

I’m excited about candidates, but I know reality.

I’m committed to voting, but ti no longer gives me that rush.

I defend my Party and its platform with vigor and fierceness, but I don’t get stomach-cramped angry like I used to…

Except when I hear bill Clinton Speak…

President Clinton manages to boil my blood and turn my skin inside-out as much today as he did years ago!

Maybe it was childhood Naiveté, though I doubt it I was a pretty bright child, but I remember a better time and a better America. Not a perfect one, but a better one.  I remember an America where people were making it, barely sometimes, but making it. I remember having hope and excitement about what was to come. I remember seeing the relief on my parents face as thing got a little bit easier.

I remember a President pushing for, ahead of his time, integration of Gay people into the military, expansion of healthcare and a new way of balancing a budget that doesn’t do so on the back of poor people. 

I remember a country where I felt I had the world at my fingertips and the opportunities to so many things I couldn’t pick it out which of them I might want to pursue.  I remember a President so successful and helping people and maintain credibility that the only real weapon against him the opposition party had was his sex life, which I Maintain was none of anyone’s business, then or now.

I remember a President whose speeches made me cry when I was 12, and when I was 16, and today, at 29, still do.  I’ll vote for Barack Obama, and I will defend his policies, even though I don’t love them 100%.  I will work to recruit my friends and family to do so, with excitement and hope.

But most of all, I will yearn for the days when Bill Clinton was President, and work to regain that sense of promise, of hope and of progress. Because that, is what this Country needs now, and if He believes in Barack Obama, I can’t understand why any thinking person wouldn’t as well!