Sunflower Chalice

I’ll admit that when it came to supporting Barack Obama, the final tipping point for me was the speech he gave after the New Hampshire primary. I have disagreements with Obama. Powerful ones. He didn’t stand up and question the Ohio election results in 2004. He won’t come outright for a national universal single-payer health care system. He won’t stand straight up for equal marriage rights (which is too bad, because if he is the nominee, I think he might be able to win and still press this issue nationally). Yet in that speech I saw something that folks to the left, folks who generally hold my values haven’t seen in a long, long time – an inspirational figure. And someone who had finally figured out that in a national election personality matters (hello Al Gore, John Kerry, Walter Mondale). Almost immediately after I decided to make a huge shift and change my voter registration from Green-Rainbow (the Green Party affiliate here in Massachusetts) to unenrolled, so that I could vote for Obama in the Democratic primary, Will.i.am’s song and video of the New Hampshire Yes We Can speech hit the Internet and went viral.