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A Different Way Of Deciding |
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(This post is part of the MyDD candidate series. I am not affiliated with the Dodd campaign in any way.)
I’ve never campaigned for a candidate before. Sure, I’ve supported various people during various elections, and I’ve voted for some of them. But I’ve never actually worked to get a candidate elected.
Perhaps this is because I never felt too strongly about any one politician. More likely, I believe I was wary of the cult of personality many build around their favorites. Often, support for a candidate boils down to how you feel about a person, how they act and react, how they handle themselves in public. All of these things are important, sure, but they can also be misleading. Millions of Americans said they would rather have a beer with Bush than with Kerry. We see how well that kind of decision-making turned out.
I am also wary of political promises. Politicians promise voters everything short of the impossible. If we will only elect them, everyone will be happy, safe, and rich. Even in my short political life I’ve grown accustomed to disappointment. To take a recent example, we were promised that Democrats would end the war in Iraq, and yet thousands continue to die every month in that war torn country.
Because of these reasons, if I was going to endorse any candidate at all for the 2008 primary, that endorsement had to be approached differently. When I sat down to write my endorsement for The Seminal, one candidate stood out.
Chris Dodd is a candidate I feel comfortable endorsing. I feel comfortable endorsing him because I believe I’m doing it for the right reasons. You see, almost every Democratic candidate has a national platform from which to get things done now. (Bill Richardson and John Edwards are partially excluded, of course.) Of the candidates with a national platform, Chris Dodd is the only one who is actually using his current position of power to affect change that I care about in the present. Not next week. Not in 2009. Right now.
To quote from my earlier endorsement:
Dodd is using his position of power to make things happen now. In quick succession, he’s fought three legislative battles that have impressed me:
- He co-sponsored an amendment restoring Habeas Corpus and he created a great grassroots tool to help citizens whip their representatives to vote for the bill.
- He has put a hold on the latest version of the FISA legislation and has said he will filibuster any bill containing retroactive immunity for telecom companies.
- He was the first to pledge to oppose Michael Mukasey’s nomination for Attorney General on the grounds that no Attorney General can put the executive branch above the law.
Just the other day, Dodd called on Attorney General Mukasey to investigate Bush and Cheney’s involvement in the passing of false information through former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
These kinds of strong actions, taken in the present, are way better than any promise or stirring turn of phrase a politician could make on the campaign trail. What happens in 2008 is important, sure, but so is what’s happening now. And if Chris Dodd has the fortitude to fight for what he and I believe in as a Senator, I have no doubt that he’ll do the same as President.
My support for a candidate in the past was never particularly strong. I would often vote, as many have voted, for “the best of the worst,” choosing the candidate who I best identified with. But today, in the run-up to the 2008 primaries, Democrats are presented with a plethora of good choices. It’s really something amazing. For the first time in a while, almost every person in the Democratic field I could feel good about voting for in the general election. I’m now asked to pick the best candidate to support with my primary vote, not simply the best of the worst. It’s a wonderful feeling.
I’m proud, then, to choose Chris Dodd, as he has proved already, without ever stepping foot in the Oval Office, that he will fight for me.
(cross posted at MyDD)
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